“A gambler!” he repeated, the pen with which he was writing dropping from his hands and his face white as a corpse. “What do you mean? Who has said this of me?” “It does not matter. I have heard that it was hinted. I said it was a lie, and it is. You are not a gambler. If I thought you were and that the money you give us so freely was obtained that way, I’d—I’d—burn my dresses! I’d smash the furniture! I believe I’d set fire to the house!” She looked like a little fury, with her flashing eyes and flushed, eager face, and Mr. Grey drew his chair back from her as if afraid she might do him bodily harm. Two or three times he tried to speak, but the words he wanted to say were difficult to utter and his lips twitched nervously. “Say, father,” she continued, “are you a gambler?” He was glad she put the question that way, and answered her clearly and distinctly: “No, daughter, I am not.” “I knew it, and I’m so glad,” and Louie’s arms were around his neck, and she was smothering him with kisses, each of which seemed to burn the spot it touched, as he tried to disengage himself from her, and asked her to tell him what she had heard. She told him all at last, and although it was not much, it was the first breath of suspicion which had reached him in his prosperous career, and it struck him harder than Louie ever dreamed. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said. “It is not necessary to trouble her.” “Of course not,” Louie answered, “but what are you going to do? Won’t you arrest ’em? Sue ’em for slander, or something?” Mr. Grey laughed and answered: “Sue whom? That boy, or his father, from whom, I think, the whole story started, because he is jealous of my success? No, Louie, that is not my nature, and it is the wiser plan to pay no attention to a story which will die of itself if it is given nothing to feed upon. I am not a gambler. Perhaps I speculate a little now and then in a safe, legitimate way, but that is very common. And now go.” He was quite himself again, and, with a load lifted from her mind, Louie went out to meet her mother, who had just come in. She did not see Herbert again, to speak with him, that day or the next, although he passed the house two or three times very slowly, and she knew he was hoping to get a sight of her. The next day a new wheel came to her, and, anxious to show it and try it, she started out for a spin, going past the White house, at which she looked almost as anxiously as Herbert had looked for her the day before, and with better success, for she had scarcely turned from that street into the Boulevard when she heard the whir of a wheel behind her, and Herbert came scorching to her side, nearly running her down in his headlong haste. “I say, Louie,” he began, “where have you kept yourself? It’s an age since I saw you. I hope you are not mad at what I told you. I wish my tongue had been cut out before I did it; and isn’t your wheel a dandy? Don’t ride so fast. I want to see it. Are you mad?”