"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see that graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her there, though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like that. I don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to think of it, I don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to have laid this plan from the first, college and all; but I never saw it. Sometimes I'm afraid--sometimes I almost think--" He tapped his forehead and shook his head, and John Martin nodded contemplatively, and said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are right, Fred. Too much study is a dangerous thing for women. The structure of their brains won't stand it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in sympathetic silence, while James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan that he thought he'd catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to demean herself and disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in the position of Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was quite right, albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits--after the happy day--she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook or by crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method or motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did not disturb her slumbers. XIV. Some one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was dying, and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter gentleman did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in going. He did not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care. She had faced him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the morning after she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really originated, but which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the earnest behest of a social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in the interest of virtue, but who was at the present moment engaged in lobbying vigorously in the interest of vice. When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two men there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the bed, and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you bring him and--and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where he is, an'--an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring _all_ of your kind that helped along the job?" Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned. "Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was standing before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis. That can do no good. They did not intend--" "No'm," began Berton, awkwardly; "no'm, I didn't once think o' _my_ girl, n--" He glanced uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed. "Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said Katherine. "No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.