To this Roland made no immediate reply. He lowered his eyes. "Paralysis is written in your face," he mused. Then aloud and rather sadly: "The fairest patrimony is an honored name," he said. "It is for me to guard my father's reputation. It is only recently, stress of circumstances aiding, I have thought that without publicity some compromise might possibly be effected." He looked up again, and as he looked he assured himself that the old man would not outlast the year. "Well, Mr. Mistrial, you must let me quote the speech a lord made to a commoner, 'You are not a noble, sir, but you are worthy of being one.'" And Mr. Dunellen reaching out caught Roland's hand and shook it in his own. "I enter thoroughly into your delicacy the more readily because I do not encounter it every day--no, nor every month. It does me good--on my word it does. Now, if a compromise can, as you suggest, be effected, and you care to leave the matter in my hands, I will do my best to serve you. It may take some little time, we must seem neither zealous nor impatient, and meanwhile--h'm--I understood you to say something about your circumstances. Now if I can be of any--" This offer Roland interrupted. "You are truly very kind, sir," he broke in, "and I thank you with all my heart. All the more so even because I must refuse. I have been badly brought up, I know; you see, I never expected that it would be necessary for me to earn my own living; yet if it is, I cannot begin too soon: but what would the end be if I began by borrowing money?" As Roland delivered this fine speech he was the image of Honesty arrayed in a Piccadilly coat. He rose from his seat. "I am detaining you, I am sure. Let me get the papers together and bring them to you to-morrow." "Do so, by all means," Mr. Dunellen answered, rising too. "Do so, by all means. But wait: to-morrow I may be absent. Could you not send them to my house this evening, or better still, bring them yourself? It would give me pleasure to have my daughter meet a man who is the moral portrait of his grandfather." "Your daughter!" Roland exclaimed. "It is not possible that she is the Miss Dunellen whom I saw the other day at Tuxedo." "With Mrs. Metuchen? Why, of course it is." And the lawyer looked as surprised as his client. "This is indeed a coincidence. But you will come, will you not?" "I shall consider it a privilege to do so," Roland, with a charming affectation of modesty, replied; and presently, when he found himself in the street again, he saw, stretching out into beckoning vistas, a high-road paved with promises of prompt success. And that evening, when the papers had been delivered, and Mr. Dunellen, leaving the guest to his daughter's care, had gone with them to his study, Roland could not help but feel that on that high-road his footing was assured; for, on entering the drawing-room, Justine had greeted him as one awaited and welcome, and now that her father had gone she motioned him to a seat at her side.