“There is many a moral wrong perpetuated under the cloak of ‘legality,’” she began, somewhat sarcastically, then continued, more earnestly: “My proud, self-willed knight, whose watchwords are truth and honor, whose life is to be ‘foursquare,’ do you think there are no others whose natures are reaching out after the same heights? There _are_ others, Earle,” she said, more softly, with glowing cheeks and drooping lids, “who look with longing eyes toward the ‘jasper walls,’ and ‘gates of pearl;’ and can one be ‘true and honorable’ and keep what does not belong to one?” “How can I convince you, Editha, that I _cannot_ take this money?” “But what _will_ you do, Earle? How will you begin life again?” she asked, anxiously. “I have a little, enough for that, laid by; and now, with three years’ interest added, it will be sufficient to give me a start, and I shall do very well. Do not allow my refusal to comply with your wishes to disturb you. Try to imagine that if Mr. Forrester had never known me he would never have thought of making a change in the disposition of his property,” Earle concluded, lightly. “But the _if_ exists, nevertheless. He _did_ make the change; and, once for all, I will not have my conscience burdened with what is not my own. Earle, on the twentieth of next November I shall deposit in the First National Bank of this city ten thousand dollars, with a year’s interest, to your credit,” she asserted, resolutely. “Meanwhile,” she added, “Mr. Felton told me to say to you that he thought he could arrange some way for you to keep your head above board, if you will go to him.” “I thank Mr. Felton, but I think the term ‘self-willed’ may be applied to some one else besides myself,” Earle answered, smilingly. “Earle,” cried the lovely girl, turning suddenly upon him, and, with something of her old girlish impulse, laying one white hand on his, “if you won’t do as I wish for your _own_ sake, won’t you for _mine_? and”—the color mounting to her forehead as she made the delicate offer—“until the year expires, won’t you please go to Mr. Felton and get whatever you need?” If Earle was ever impatient and rebellious in his life he was at that moment at the cruel fate that kept him from reaching out and clasping his beautiful beloved in his arms, and telling her all the love of his great heart. How delicately she had worded her proposition! She had not coarsely offered to give him money from her own income, feeling that his proud spirit would recoil from coming to her, a woman, for help; but she had made Mr. Felton the medium through which all his needs might be supplied until he could establish himself in business. He ventured to take that small hand and press it gratefully.