Mrs. Peyton had listened with an intensity of attention that left her reply unprepared. There was something startling and yet half attractive in the girl’s avowal of principles which are oftener lived by than professed. “And you think,” she began at length, “that in this case he has fallen below his opportunity?” “No one can tell, of course; but his discouragement, his _abattement_, is a bad sign. I don’t think he has any hope of succeeding.” The mother again wavered a moment. “Since you are so frank,” she then said, “will you let me be equally so, and ask how lately you have seen him?” The girl smiled at the circumlocution. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said simply. “And you thought him--” “Horribly down on his luck. He said himself that his brain was empty.” Again Mrs. Peyton felt the throb in her throat, and a slow blush rose to her cheek. “Was that all he said?” “About himself--was there anything else?” said the girl quickly. “He didn’t tell you of--of an opportunity to make up for the time he has lost?” “An opportunity? I don’t understand.” “He didn’t speak to you, then, of Mr. Darrow’s letter?” “He said nothing of any letter.” “There _was_ one, which was found after poor Darrow’s death. In it he gave Dick leave to use his design for the competition. Dick says the design is wonderful--it would give him just what he needs.” Miss Verney sat listening raptly, with a rush of colour that suffused her like light. “But when was this? Where was the letter found? He never said a word of it!” she exclaimed. “The letter was found on the day of Darrow’s death.” “But I don’t understand! Why has he never told me? Why should he seem so hopeless?” She turned an ignorant appealing face on Mrs. Peyton. It was prodigious, but it was true--she felt nothing, saw nothing, but the crude fact of the opportunity. Mrs. Peyton’s voice trembled with the completeness of her triumph. “I suppose his reason for not speaking is that he has scruples.” “Scruples?” “He feels that to use the design would be dishonest.” Miss Verney’s eyes fixed themselves on her in a commiserating stare. “Dishonest? When the poor man wished it himself? When it was his last request? When the letter is there to prove it? Why, the design belongs to your son! No one else had any right to it.” “But Dick’s right does not extend to passing it off as his own--at least that is his feeling, I believe. If he won the competition he would be winning it on false pretenses.” “Why should you call them false pretenses? His design might have been better than Darrow’s if he had had time to carry it out. It seems to me that Mr. Darrow must have felt this--must have felt that he owed his friend some compensation for the time he took from him. I can imagine nothing more natural than his wishing to make this return for your son’s sacrifice.”