"And what would I give, think you, could it be so? But the past is irrevocable. Were it not for this debt of shame hanging upon us, do you think I would have allowed Lily to occupy her present position?" "She does not know----" interrupted Felix. "She knows nothing of all this. She may one day; it may be my duty to tell her; and then, if any one reproaches her, she has her answer." "Need she know, ever?" asked Felix eagerly, thinking of the pain the knowledge would cause her. "I say she may, if only as a warning; for I think I see trouble coming. I pray that I may be mistaken, but I think I see it." "I do not understand your meaning," said Felix earnestly; "but if I might venture to ask one thing, and you would grant it, it would be a great happiness to me." "Let me hear what it is, Felix," replied Old Wheels gently. "That if at any time I can be of use to you--if at any time you want a friend upon whom you can depend, and who would sacrifice much to serve you and your granddaughter----" "That then I will call upon you? I promise." "Thank you, sir." "You must have wondered, seeing, as you have seen, how pure and simple my dear girl is--you must have wondered that I should have brought her into contact with such associations as those by which she is surrounded at the Royal White Rose. But it was what I conceived to be a sacred duty; and if I had had a shadow of a doubt that she was other than she is, I would have given my life rather than have done it, as you know." "Truly, sir, as I know," assented Felix. "I have watched her from infancy, and I know her purity. I pray that she may be spared from life's hard trials; but they may come to her, as they come to most of us. They may come to her undeservedly, and through no fault of hers; and if they do, and if, like Imogen, she has to pass through the fire, she will, like Imogen, come out unscathed." Some hidden fear, some doubt which he was loth to express more plainly, prompted the old man's words. With an effort, he returned to his first theme. "What else could I do? There was no other way of paying the debt. I have a small pittance of my own, from which not a shilling can be spared; our necessities demand it all. And when I think, as I do often, that this dear child, tender as she is, has been and is working to wipe out, as far as is humanly possible, the disgrace entailed upon us by her father's crime, I love her the more dearly for it." He went to the mantelshelf, where the portraits of Lily hung, and gazed at them long and lovingly.