“Anita, I want you—I love you—none of these things count. I know you are in no way guiltily connected with this crime—if you are mixed up with it, it is through force of circumstances, and anyway, I don’t care who or what you are—I love you, I believe in you and I want you.” “But it’s all so dreadful—and I can’t tell—” “Don’t tell anything you don’t want to—” “But that man will tell. That terrible Trask man.” Lockwood didn’t waver in his fealty or loyalty but it was a blow to learn that Trask knew something of Anita’s secrets. “I don’t care,” he said, firmly, “I love you.” CHAPTER XIV A PROPOSAL Maurice Trask took up his reins of government with a firm hand. He left all housekeeping and domestic matters to Mrs. Peyton, but the business affairs of Doctor Waring, he concluded to clean up as rapidly as possible. “It’s astonishing,” he said to Lockwood, “what a lot of varied interests my cousin had. This morning’s mail brings all sorts of things from Rare Book Catalogues to Mining Prospectuses. By the way, I think I shall have an auction of his rare books. Such things don’t interest me, and I believe they have a big money value.” “Some of them have,” Lockwood returned, indifferently. He could not bring himself to like his new employer, but as he had agreed to stay with him for a time, he did his best to meet requirements. “Take this lot, now,” and Trask indicated a bookcase full of old volumes of the classics. “They mean nothing to me—I can’t read Latin or Greek, and wouldn’t if I could. My good heavens! Look at this one!” Trask had taken down the volume that had been on Doctor Waring’s desk the night of his death. As he flipped over the pages, two were stuck together, and the ghastly red stains showed only too clearly that they were the spilled blood of the dying man. “Ugh!” he said, holding out the volume to Lockwood, “burn that up. How could anyone have put it back on the shelf? Never let me see it again!” The secretary took it, noting that it was a copy of Martial, to which Doctor Waring had been greatly attached. Indeed, it had, to Lockwood’s knowledge, been lying on the Doctor’s desk for a week or more before his death. Laying the stained volume aside in his own desk, Lockwood proceeded to assist in the examination of the books. He was not at all surprised to find Trask discarding the ones he would have retained and keeping the most worthless—though there was little that could really be called trash in the Waring library. “Where are the story books?” the new owner grumbled. “No detective stories? No spicy novels? No joke-books?” “Doctor Waring was serious-minded,” Lockwood reminded him. “He cared little for lighter reading. He was a scholar.” “He sure was—to judge from these old dry-as-dust tomes. But, I’ll fire a lot of the poky old stuff, and so make room for more entertaining books. You see, Lockwood, I hope—and I expect to get me a wife before long.”