"I think, ma'am," she said, "that Mr. Desmond may have gone to Brandon, for there was a boy here with a bit of a note from Miss Brandon herself in the morning, and when Mr. Desmond came in and read it he just ordered his chop and immediately after went out again. I shouldn't be surprised now if you were picking him up, if so be you took it into your head to walk towards Brandon." "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Fahy," said I, "I think we shall." And, sure enough, when we went into the drawing-room at Brandon there was the man himself sitting astride a spindle-legged chair, and talking earnestly with Aline. They made a curious contrast, he with his big frame and rugged face, his great hands, with their look of grasp, resting on his knees, and his rough colonist's clothes, and she so fair and dainty and refined, with her almost old-world dignity. She was wearing a tea-gown which had been easily adapted from our great-grandmother's wardrobe, a brocade of the colour the French call ashes of roses, a queer, elegant, faded thing, with old lace at the neck and wrists. I saw at once that Aline had made a toilette for Mr. Desmond, and guessed at her tender reason. She did him so much honour in the hope that he would more surely be a friend to her boys. As we came through the ante-room unannounced Mr. Desmond was speaking, and I signed to Lance not to disturb him till he had finished. "I can only say, Miss Brandon, that I loved the lad like a son, and would have saved him from pain and trouble just as if he had been my son. But I have had a rough life, and did not know how to manage a lad like him when it came to a delicate matter. I can only say what a deep grief it has been to me." [Illustration: "I CAN ONLY SAY, MISS BRANDON, THAT I LOVED THE LAD LIKE A SON."] "Oh, no, no!" said Aline with her handkerchief at her eyes. "He said that no one could have been more patient, more wise, and tender with him than you were. I can never thank you enough." "I wish to Heaven I could have saved him," the man answered in his deep and musical voice. Then we went in, and Aline introduced us to Mr. Desmond. He and Lance fraternized at once, if one can talk of fraternizing in a case like this, where my husband sat and looked at the elder man with a boyish expression of hero-worship on his face, and listened with such deference. There was a curious nobility and simplicity about the man. Whatever his successes had been in the world, it was easy to see that they had not been obtained by craft and guile or by trampling on weaker men. Seeing that we were interested in what he had to tell he talked with simple unconsciousness fully and freely.