Adrian was embarrassed. It seemed as if even an old love could hardly be of so sluggish a divination,--as if Randal must have probed his meaning. He reflected that it might be some keenly sensitive consciousness that could not yet bear the open recognition of the facts. Between them the subject of the sudden jilting had never been mentioned, save in Randal’s one letter apprising his brother that the engagement was off, by reason of the lady’s change of mind, which came, indeed, later than the item in the Paris journals, chronicling news of interest to Americans sojourning abroad, and giving details of a new betrothal in a circle of great wealth and position. He himself had never known such frenzy of emotion, of rage, and humiliation, and compassion, and pride. The event had racked him with vicarious woe. It had dealt him a wound that would not heal, but now and again burst into new and undreamed of phases of anguish. Even yet he shrank from taking her name on his lips--and to Randal himself, of all people. Yet Randal must be told,--he must not meet her unaware. The pause of indecision continued so long as they stood thus, Adrian’s hands on his brother’s shoulders, that Randal’s eyes dilated with a surprise obviously unaffected. He lifted his own hands to his brother’s elbows, and thus facing each other he said: “What of it? I am in a hurry,--I want to see that release. Who is this ‘she’?” “Why, Randal,--it is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,--Paula Majoribanks, that was, and her husband and child.” There was still a pause, blank of significance. “Well,” said Randal, meditatively, at length, “they won’t like that quit-claim paper one little bit of a bit.” There was a laugh in his brilliant hazel eyes, and it touched the finely cut corners of his lips. His fresh face was as joyous, as candid, as full of the tender affection of this reunion as if no word of a troubled past had been spoken to jar it. Oh, that she should come between them on this day when they were so close to each other, Adrian reflected, when absence had made each so dear, when there was so much to say and to do, when separation impended, and time was so short. He felt that he could hardly endure to have their mutual pleasure marred, that he could not brook to see Randal abashed in her presence, and conscious, disconcerted and at a disadvantage before her husband. Above all, and before all, he winced for Randal’s pain in the reopening of these poignant old wounds to bleed and ache anew. His arms tightened and slipped up from his brother’s shoulders and around his neck. “Oh, Randal, will it hurt you much?” Randal looked grave. “A lawsuit is always a troublesome, long-drawn-out bother; I shrink from the suspense and the expense. But I am mighty glad to have the chance to be hurt that way.” “Oh, I meant will it give you pain to meet Paula again as Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” “_What?_” Randal’s hearty young voice rang out with a note of amazement. “Not a bit. What do you take me for?”