"The wind is changing," said Mr. Burton, speaking like the old gentleman in Bleak House. "I see how the land lies. The goodly and noble Argyll ship is driving on to the rocks. Mark my words, she will go to pieces soon! you will see her ruins strewing the shore." "I pray heaven to avert your prophecy. I hope not to live to see any such sight." "How can it be otherwise?" he exclaimed, rising and pacing to and fro through my little room, like a caged elephant. "A spendthrift and a gambler--a man like _that_--about to have the helm put in his hands! But it's none of my business--none of my business; nor much yours, either." "It is mine!" I cried; "I can not help but make it mine, as if these girls were my sisters, and Mr. Argyll my father. Yet, as you say--it is, indeed, nothing to me. They will not allow it to be!" I drooped my head on my arms; my own loss and disappointment were receding into the background before the idea of their possible discomfiture. I was startled by the detective bringing his clenched hand down upon the table with a blow which shook it; he was standing, looking not at me, but at the wall, as if he saw some one before him, invisible to me. "James Argyll is a singular man--a _singular_ man! A person ought to be a panther in cunning and strength to cope with him. By George, if I don't look out, he'll overreach me yet--with that will of his. I see everybody about me succumbing. He's having the game all in his own hands. By the way, Redfield, I was a little surprised to see Lenore so fond of him." "Why so, Mr. Burton? James is an attractive, elegant young man; he has never had any lack of admirers. It would rather have been strange if your daughter had _not_ fancied him. He has been very good to her." "He has, indeed; I'm sure I ought to be greatly obliged to all of you. Did I ever tell you that I place great confidence in Lenore's intuitive perception of character? You know that I have a remarkable gift that way myself. When I meet people, I seem to see their minds, and not their bodies--I can't help it. Well, I've remarked the same thing in my child. She is so young and inexperienced that she can not explain her own impressions; she has her instantaneous partialities, and I have noticed that she leans toward true natures like a flower toward the light, and away from the false as if they were shadows. I hardly expected she would be so intimate with young Argyll." I remembered the curious effect his first address had made upon her; but I did not repeat it to her father. I was sensitive about appearing in any manner jealous of James; if he could win my friends from me, even that little girl whom I had loved for her pure sweetness, let them go! I was too proud to solicit them to reconsider their opinions.