"I knew you were unarmed. You would have had no chance." They were going up the steps, Braddock between the others. Brooks, the footman, was holding the door open. He had been a politely interested witness to the startling encounter. Braddock seemed to be studying each successive slab of stone as he ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have formed a habit of jamming his hands far down into his coat pockets. "That was the only chance _he'll_ ever have," was his sententious remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house, Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have been called a sigh. "Thank God!" she breathed, sinking upon the hall seat and clasping her clenched hands to her breast. Braddock shot a quick glance up the broad stairway. The surroundings were strange to him,--he had never been inside the home of his father-in-law before,--but he knew that Christine was somewhere overhead. "How's Christine, Mary?" he asked roughly. "She is wretchedly unhappy, Tom." "Umph!" was the way he received it, but a close observer might have seen the flutter of his eyelids and the sharp, convulsive movement in the coat pockets. "I don't want her to see me," he said. "She wants to see you--" He faced her angrily. "No! I've got to take care of my nerves. I can't take any chances on having 'em upset. See here, David," he said, lowering his voice and speaking with deadly emphasis, "that talk of yours about swearing out a warrant for Grand don't go, do you understand? I don't want him to be arrested. I don't want him locked up. I want him to be _free_. He'd be too safe behind the bars?" The sound of a door opening above came to them at this juncture, followed by the swift rush of feet and the rustle of skirts. Braddock looked up and instinctively drew back into an obscured recess at his left. Christine's face appeared over the railing above. She leaned far forward and called out in the high, tense tones of extreme nervousness: "Father! Is it you? Are you there?" There was no response. David, standing on the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of the man in the corner. The effect on Braddock was astounding. Signs of a great convulsion revealed themselves in his face. His lips were parted and drawn as if in pain; his eyes were half closed, screening the emotion that groped behind the lids. It was the face, the figure of a man mightily shaken by an unexpected emotion. Slowly his eyes were opened. An expression of utter despair and longing had come into them. Mrs. Braddock was staring at her husband as if she could not believe her senses. Words came hoarsely, unbidden from the man's lips, spoken as if from the bottom of his soul after years of subjection and restraint, so nearly whispered that they came to David's ears as if from afar off. "Oh! How lonesome I've been all these years, just for the sound of her voice!"