Dunham regarded her. Of course she could get a position on the stage. Any creature so pretty always could. He pictured her in some chorus, these quivering lips reddened and the swimming eyes laughing in the shade of an outrageous hat. "I should say the stage last myself," he returned. "Your own people _are_ the ones. Your Uncle Calvin"-- "I haven't any." "Well, Judge Trent, then, is what is popularly described as a dried-up old bachelor. It never occurred to him that happiness might be--that he might find a daughter in you; but he wants to do his duty by you--indeed he does," for the girl's face was discouraging, "and, by George, you ought to let him do it." "Never! And I always bade his picture good-night. Mother loved him so, and she taught me." The last word was inaudible. Dunham leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Now would you mind telling me, since you haven't any one else to tell, how much money you have?" A little determined shake of the curls. "I shouldn't think of telling you." "Then you're a very foolish girl. You ought to have more head and not so much heart in this affair. Judge Trent is a man whom any one might be proud to claim, and if you won't behave childishly we can bring him around all right." "Do you think I'd stoop to bring him around?" she asked, with a moist flash of the eyes. "You wouldn't be the first who stooped to conquer. If you were clever you would." "Father thought I was clever, and so does Nat," she said, with feeble resentment. "They wouldn't if they knew what you are doing now. Just because a busy old bachelor of a lawyer, immersed in hard-headed affairs, doesn't throw all aside and come here to welcome you and behave like a family man, you repudiate him altogether." "She said they didn't either of them want me." The voice was a wail. "But you weren't anything to them but a name." "I'm their own flesh and blood." "Yes, and see that you don't forget it. You have a claim upon them. Now at best it must be some days before you can communicate with your--friend, perhaps I ought to say your lover." "Oh, no, don't," with faint dissent. "He's father's friend, really, and he's--poor thing, he's so fat I don't think he'd call himself anybody's lover; but he's so kind. He was so good to father." This time the speaker did not vanish into the handkerchief, but caught her lip between her little teeth, and looking away, struggled for composure in a way that drew on John's heartstrings. This slender creature, not yet strong from the illness that had crowned her head with those silky tendrils, and with no supporting arm save that of a barn-storming actor, mediocre in his middle age, what was Judge Trent's representative to do or say to prevent her from taking some foolish and desperate course!