"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not--not a common reporter at _all_!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father who had not been the gentleman. "You--you might have been a little kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether you would say anything. He didn't persist." "I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What does it all mean?" The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: "Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I _could_. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you did." Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and more?" "I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was going alone. He couldn't do less." "Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's this?" He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, "Of course he will come back for it." "Well, I must send it to him. And I'll--I'll write him a note," Hilary groaned. Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, and meet all kinds of rebuffs." "I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, with some return to his grudge. "Oh, I didn't mean _you_, papa," said Louise, sweetly. The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his note-book, he--"