"I am not quite the child you think me, Ramon. Could that man have meant to insinuate that father in his own advancement had trod upon and ruined some one else, as financiers have always done? Could he have meant that father had driven this man and his wife to despair? I cannot bear to think of it. I try to thrust it from my thoughts a dozen times a day, but that groan from father's lips sounded so much like one of remorse that hideous ideas come beating in on my brain. Was my father like other rich men, Ramon? He did not live for money, although the successful manipulation of it was almost a passion with him. He lived for me, always for me, and the good that he would be able to do in this world." "Of course he did, darling. No one who knew him could imagine otherwise for a moment." He hesitated, and then added, "No one else discovered this man's presence in the house that night? You have told no one? Not the doctor, or the coroner, or Dr. Franklin?" "Oh, no; if I had it would have been necessary for me to have told what I overheard. Besides, it could have had no direct bearing on daddy's death; that was caused by heart-disease, as you say. But I believe, and I always will believe, that that man killed father, as surely, as inevitably, as if he had stabbed or shot or poisoned him! Why did he come like a thief in the night? Father's integrity, his honor, were known to all the world. Why did that reference to this Herbert and his wife cause him such pain?" "I don't know, dear; I have no more idea than you. If you really, really overheard that conversation, as you seem convinced you did, you did well in keeping it to yourself. Let that hour remain buried in your thoughts, as in your father's grave. Only rest assured that whatever it is, it casts no stain upon your father's good name or his memory." He rose and gathered her into his arms. "I must go now, Anita; I'll come again to-morrow. You are quite sure that you will not accept my mother's invitation? I really think it would be better for you." She looked deeply into his eyes, then drew herself gently from his clasp. "Not yet. Thank her for me, Ramon, with all my heart, but I will not leave my father's house just yet, even for a few days. I am sure that I shall be happier here." He kissed her, and left the room. She stood where he had left her until she heard the heavy thud of the front door. Then, turning to the window, she thrust her slim little hand between the sedately drawn curtains, and waved him a tender good-by; then with a little sigh, she dropped among the pillows of the couch, lost in thought. "Whatever was meant by that conversation which I overheard," she murmured to herself, "Ramon knows. I read it in his eyes." The young man, as he made his way down the crowded avenue, was turning over in his mind the extraordinary story which the girl he loved had told him.