"I thought again they would find out at the inquest; but when, at length, the poor body was buried, and those saturated, torn clothes burned, and I had found out from Mrs. Durgan that the poor wretch had no near relatives or friends to mourn him, I could do nothing but acquiesce. I had a message from father, through Mrs. Durgan, before they arrested me. She and he had decided that he must personate the dead man, and he even ventured to play the medium's part at the dark séance. He was always clever at disguises. I could not judge them. I hardly cared, then, whether I lived or died; the wickedness of it all was so dreadful. I shrank far more--and there was nothing heroic in that--from the thought of my father being arrested and punished than from danger for myself. Think what it would have been like if it had been your father!" Seeing that Alden was profoundly distressed, she hastened to say, "If I had told you, Herbert, how painful would your position have been! And I never even told Bertha; it was father's parting request that she should not know. But I know that of late she has guessed something, for she has lived in fear up here alone. I was obliged when I was ill in Paris to tell her where she would find the truth; she guessed the rest, I fear, and it must have been father's return that she has dreaded. But now he has been brought back so helpless he can never hurt anyone again." Alden's emotion was hardly restrained from breaking through the crust of his conventionality, and Hermione was fain to turn to a lighter aspect of the case in addressing Durgan. "I gathered from my father's letters that Mrs. Durgan's motive in befriending him was partly kindness, and partly that he could be of use to her." "I can understand that," said Durgan. He also felt it a relief to speak clearly on the only aspect of this sorrowful tale which did not awaken emotion. "It was the one thing in the whole world that my wife wanted--to be told how to manipulate the secret springs of a world of fashion in which she had so far moved as one in the dark. And having once taken your father in, she could not go back." He rose as he said this and went away, wondering how much Alden would submit to the continued devotion of such a daughter to such a father, how much Hermione's appeal would reach him: "Think how you would feel if it were your father." Chapter XXXV READJUSTMENTS A day or two later Alden was returning to New York. Durgan drove him to Hilyard in Miss Claxton's surrey. All the mountains had begun to wear golden caps. Lower down the yellow pod of the wild pea and purple clusters of wild grapes were tangled in the roadside bushes. The sun shone, and the birds cawed and chirped as they quarreled for the scarlet berries of the ash; not a bird sang, for it was not nesting time. "The doctor can't make a guess, then, as to how long Claxton may live? It may be for months, I suppose," said Durgan.