"I suppose you know this is prayer-meeting night," she said. "Yes, mother." "You can't go to it." "Why not?" "Why, you are going to a party." "I can leave the party." "Will she go?" and Mrs. Prymmer designated Derrice, who was coming down-stairs. "I think not." "Well, I'll see you there," and she went back to her well-spread table, where Captain White was rioting among supper enough for a dozen men. "Has the carriage come?" asked Derrice, when her husband, after running his eye approvingly over her ruffled muslin gown, laid his fingers on the door-knob. He blushed slightly. "I did not order one. I thought perhaps you would not mind taking a car." She laid her hand on his arm with a pretty, confiding gesture, and said, as they passed out the doorway, "You have some reason for wishing to economise." He reluctantly admitted that he had. "Tell me," she whispered. He hesitated. "You will be sure to learn of it." "I wish you to tell me." She was sweet and womanly, yet insistent. How she was developing, this young wife of his, and pressing her little hand closer to his heart, he said. "There are some debts hanging over me." "Whose debts?" "My late stepfather's,--Zebedee Prymmer. He was a lawyer here, who made a failure of the end of his life." "In what way?" "He ran away," said Justin, as hurriedly as if the words scorched his lips. "He invested trust money in speculations of his own and lost. He would have been prosecuted had he remained." "And you are trying to return this money to people who gave it to him?" "To their heirs." "And he was only your stepfather?" "My mother's husband." "He was a villain," said Derrice, with animation. "A semi-villain. He hoped to return the money." "That is villainy." "Yes, of a certain kind." "Some of those people in the Bible were also villains. Jacob was a sneak, David was a murderer, and Solomon ought to have been shut up in prison." Her tone was severe, and Justin forbore to answer her. "Yet God loved them," she went on, reverently. "Justin, how wicked can we be, and yet escape consequences?" The wind was bitterly cold, and he paused to wrap her cloak more closely about her before answering. "We must not consider that question. One can love and serve God, fall into sin, and repent. Our finite minds cannot take in the depths of his compassion." "Did your stepfather repent?" "It is not for me to judge him, but if he did, we received no word of it. His attitude was that of an injured man, and when he died, after a few years of exile, he left us his body as a precious legacy. We had him brought home and buried, and I hope his soul is with God." "Curious," said the girl, under her breath. "Justin, are we all links in a chain? I must walk to-night to help pay the debts of a man I never saw." "You shall not walk if you had rather drive." "Hush, my husband, and put up your hand to stop that car."