It is not easy to express the force of the struggle which went on in poor Milly's mind. It seemed to her at that moment as if all the hopes of her life were set against her honesty. The material issues in any conflict between principle and inclination are of less importance than the desire which they represent. The few thousand dollars involved in the redemption of the Stanton meadows was little when compared to the magnificent scheme of which this would be a mere trifling accident, but the sum represented all the desires of Milly Blake's life, while over against it stood all her faith, her honesty, and her religion. For an instant she wavered, standing as if by some spell suddenly arrested, with arms half extended. Then she flung down the paper and threw herself upon her lover's breast with a burst of tears. "Why, Milly," he said, soothingly. "Milly, Milly." He was unused to feminine vagaries. His betrothed was of the outwardly quiet order of women, and an outburst like this was incomprehensible to him. He could only hold the weeping girl in his strong embrace, soothing her in helpless masculine fashion, awkward, but exactly what she needed. "There, John," she cried at last, giving him a tumultuous hug, and looking up into his face through her tears, "I always told you you were engaged to a fool, and this is a new proof of it." "But what in the world," Stanton asked, looking down into her eyes with mingled fondness and bewilderment, "is it all about? What is the matter?" "It is nothing but my foolishness," she answered, leading him back to the chair from which he had risen. "I was going to show you something in a paper I am copying, and just in time I remembered that I had particularly promised not to show it to anybody." He regarded her curiously. "But why," he asked, with a certain deliberateness which somehow made her uneasy, "did you want to show it to me." "Because--because--" She could not equivocate, and her innocent soul had had little training in the arts of evasion. "Because what?" Stanton leaned back in his chair, holding her by the shoulders as she sat upon his knee, and searching her face with his strong brown eyes. Milly's glance drooped. "Don't ask me, John," she responded, putting her hand against his cheek, wistfully. "Don't you see I couldn't tell you without letting you know what is in the paper, and that is precisely the thing I promised not to do."