"I wish you to--to behave well to Haworth," he said faltering. "I--a great deal may--may depend upon it." She looked up at him at once, lifting her eyes in a serene glance. "Do you want to go into the iron trade?" she asked relentlessly. He blushed scarlet, but she did not move her eyes from his face on that account. "What--what Haworth needs," he stammered, "is a--a man of education to--to assist him. A man who had studied the scientific features of--of things, might suggest valuable ideas to him. There is an--an immense field open to a rich, enterprising fellow such as he is--a man who is fearless and--and who has the means to carry out his ventures." "You mean a man who will try to do new things," she remarked. "Do you think he would?" "The trouble has been," floundering more hopelessly than ever, "that his lack of cultivation has--well, has forced him to act in a single groove. If--if he had a--a partner who--knew the ropes, so to speak--his business would be doubled--trebled." She repeated aloud one of his words. "A partner," she said. He ran his hand through his hair and stared at her, wishing that he could think of something decided to say. "Does he know you would like to be his partner?" she asked next. "N--no," he faltered, "not exactly." She sat a moment looking at the fire. "I do not believe he would do it," she said at last. "He is too proud of having done everything single-handed." Then she looked at her father again. "If he would," she said, "and there were no rash ventures made, it would be a good thing." CHAPTER XVI. "A POOR CHAP AS IS ALLUS I' TROUBLE." "It was nothing but a chance, after all," Murdoch said to Miss Ffrench, just as he had said to Haworth. "It happened that I was the first to see the danger." She stood opposite to him upon the hearth in her father's house. Neither of them had sat down. She rested her arm upon the low mantel and played with a flower she held in her hand. She looked at the flower as she made the reply. "You think of it very lightly," she said with rather cold deliberateness. He did not regard her furtively as Haworth had done. Raising her eyes suddenly, after she had said this, she met his, which were fixed upon her. "No," he answered. "Not lightly at all. It was a horrible thing. I shall never forget it." She shuddered. "Nor I," she said. Then she added, rather in the tone of one reluctantly making a confession: "I have not slept easily through one night since." "That is very natural," he returned; "but the feeling will wear away." He would have left her then, but she stopped him with a gesture. "Wait a moment," she said. "There is something else." He paused as she bade him. A slight color rose to her cheek.