“At least it might be well to write him a polite note,” she said, “thanking him, and saying that circumstances might arise under which you would be glad to--to avail yourself, and so on.” “I don’t think I shall write at all,” Kate replied, glancing over the lawyer’s missive again. “He took no interest in the thing whatever. And you see how even now he infers that ‘the lines I suggested’ were dishonorable.” “I didn’t see that, Kate.” “Here it is. ‘He was unable to see his way,’ and that sort of thing. And he _said_ himself that the business all seemed regular enough, so far as he could see.--Say that there is no answer,” she added to the maid at the door. The two girls sat in silence for a moment in the soft, cosey light between the fire-place and the lace-shaded lamp. Then Ethel spoke again: “And you really didn’t like him, Kate? You know you were so enthusiastic about him, that day you came back from the milliner’s shop. I never heard you have so much to say about any other man before.” “That was different,” mused the other. Her voice grew even less kindly, and the words came swifter as she went on. “_Then_ it was a question of helping the Lawton girl. He was quite excited about _that_. He didn’t hum and haw, and talk about ‘the lines suggested’ to him, then. He could ‘see his way’ very clearly indeed. Oh, yes, with entire clearness! And I was childish enough to be taken in by it all. I am vexed with myself when I think of it.” “Are you sure you are being quite fair, Kate?” pale Ethel asked, putting her hand caressingly on the sister’s knee. “Read the letter again, dear. He _says_ he wants to help you; and he hints, too, that something has happened, or is going to happen, to make him free in the matter. How can we tell what that something is, or how he felt himself bound before? It seems to me that we oughtn’t to leap at the idea of his being unfriendly. I am sure that you believed him to be a wholly good man before. Why assume all at once now that he is not, just because--Men don’t change from good to bad like that.” “Ah, but _was_ he good before, or did we only think so?” Ethel went on: “Surely, he knows more about business than we do. And if he was unable to help you, it must have been for some real reason.” “That is _it!_ I should like to be helped first, and let reasons come afterward.” The girl’s dark eyes flashed with an imperious light. “What kind of a hero is it who, when you cry for assistance, calmly says: ‘Upon the lines you suggest I do not see my way’? It is high time the books about chivalry were burned, if ‘that’ is the modern man.” “But you did not cry to a hero for assistance. You merely asked the advice of a lawyer about a mortgage---if mamma is right about its being a mortgage.” “It is the same thing,” said Kate, pushing the hassock impatiently with her foot.. “Whether the distressed maiden falls into the water or into debt, the principle is precisely the same.”