“Then what in thunder is in the way?” the judge asked, slightly appeased. “Have you any fears of Bee’s saying no? I can assure you there. I know she won’t. I am as certain of it as that I am living now.” Suddenly there shot across Everard’s mind a way of escape from the difficulty, a chance for a longer respite, and he said: “If I were to ask Bee to marry me and she refused would you be satisfied?” “With you? Yes, but, I tell you she won’t refuse. And don’t you ask her unless you intend to stick to it like a man,” the judge replied, as he rose to end the conference. “I shall ask her, and to-night,” was Everard’s low-spoken answer, which reached his father’s ears, and sent him home in a better frame of mind. He was very gracious to Everard at dinner, and paid him the compliment of consulting him on some business matter, but Everard was too much pre-occupied to heed what he was saying, and declining the dessert excused himself from the table, and went to his own room. Never since his ill-starred marriage had he felt so troubled and perplexed as now, when the fruit of his wrong-doing was staring him so broadly in the face. That his father would never leave him in peace until he proposed to Beatrice, he knew, and unless he confessed everything and threw himself upon his mercy, there was but one course left him to pursue,—tell Beatrice the whole story, without the slightest prevarication, and then go through the farce of offering himself to her, who must, of course, refuse. This refusal he could report to his father, who would not blame him, and so a longer probation would come to himself. In his excitement he did not stop to consider what a cowardly thing it was to throw the responsibility upon a girl, and make her bear the burden for him. To do him justice, however, he did not for a moment suppose Beatrice cared for him as his father believed she did, or he would never have gone to insult her with an offer she could not accept.