"Never thought of that," returned Wilkinson, paling slightly. "By the way," he mused, "after Leslie marries you I'll have to find some other dummy to hold those stocks and bonds for me, otherwise, you'll get your hooks on them." He laughed. "Cleverest scheme in the world, boy--Flomerfelt and I concocted it. Why, look here, I've been joking, nothing else. I'm not going to give you a million." "You're not!" cried Leech, growing white. "No!" roared Wilkinson. "Hang it all, I'm going to give you two...." "That's better," assented Leech, sinking back into his seat. "But when?" "Leslie's got to sign." "Can you close this to-day?" "As soon as I can get her. Come on--she's probably upstairs." Wilkinson and Leech left the room, and Leslie, her face flushed with the knowledge of what she had heard, crept from the room and through the hall back to the postern stair. There, in an empty room she crouched down until she heard them coming down again, then made a dash for her boudoir and locked herself in. After a while a servant rapped on her door and informed her that he had been looking all over for her. "Who wants me?" she inquired. "Your father, Miss, and Mr. Leech," he told her. "Tell my father to come up," said Leslie. Presently her father, with a document in his hand, entered the room, and smilingly announced: "Just wanted you to sign this, girlie." Leslie glanced at it cursorily, saw that it was what she believed it to be--a means of payment to Leech, and signing, passed it over without looking at her father. He stood for an instant at the door. "Newton has come up to see you," he said. "The Governor is getting kind of lonely up in Albany--he can hardly wait to get a Mrs. Governor up there." Leslie drew her hand across her face. "Please tell Mr. Leech," she answered, "that I'm ill. I can't possibly see him to-day--no," she persisted, "don't ask me--not to-day." She pushed her father playfully from the room and once more locked the door. Then she went back to the window and read the printed case of the People _versus_ Peter V. Wilkinson until the shadows deepened into darkness. "It's all so clear now," she sighed. "How could they have acquitted him? How could Eliot Beekman have pardoned him, even if he had wanted to? Oh, he's guilty, guilty, guilty!" Completely exhausted, Leslie laid down the volume and threw herself upon the bed, where she lay until the early morning sunlight peered in through the windows. Throughout the long night she had not closed her eyes, but lay there thinking, planning, some way out of it all. The morning found her resolved upon one point: She would never marry the man her father wanted her to marry. And so it happened that some weeks later Governor Leech, looking down upon her, his face suddenly gone pale, his breath coming short, protested: