He was rather puzzled to know why Mr. Gordon had sent him that mysterious summons; but when they met, and he frankly inquired the reason, he received an evasive reply. Mr. Gordon promised to tell him after awhile, but just now he had promised to escort his daughter, Mrs. Wentworth, into the ball-room, where the lively strains of the band were already in progress. Would Mr. Le Roy see Beatrix and forgive her for her share in his past trouble? She was so sorry, so ashamed. She had never dreamed how it would all turn out. The publisher was a little nervous as he thus pleaded for his daughter. She had told her father the story of her unanswered letter to Mr. Le Roy. He could not tell whether time had softened his resentment at the girl's conspiracy that had ended so disastrously. Mr. Le Roy grew very pale for a moment as he was thus brought face to face with the past. Then he remembered Mrs. Wentworth's letter with something like shame. It had been so kind, and sweet, and womanly--so truly repentant. "I was rude and churlish to slight it so," he said to himself, remorsefully. "I shall be very glad to see her, and I hope she will forgive me for my churlishness," he said. Mr. Gordon conducted him to his daughter's private parlor. Beatrix was there, looking very lovely in a simple evening-dress of black and white. Tears crowded thickly to her azure eyes as she confessed her fault and begged him to pardon her. "If I had known that you were at Eden, Mr. Le Roy, I should never have sent poor little Laurel there," said Beatrix. "I was a young and silly girl enough, I own, but I should have been too wise to have sent that lovely, ignorant child into the way of temptation." "That lovely, ignorant child!"--somehow those words seemed like a tacit reproach to him. Yes, that was what she had been--a beautiful, simple child, all unversed in the world's ways, ignorant of the enormity of her fault, or believing that her great love condoned it. How hardly, how cruelly he had judged her, the girl-wife he had taken before God, "for better, for worse." "I have not kept my vow," he said to himself, and Beatrix, who thought him hard and stern, wondered at the softness of his voice as he replied: "I forgive you freely, Mrs. Wentworth, and, indeed, I sometimes wonder if there is anything to forgive. My wife made me very happy. I erred when in my hardness I refused to forgive her. But for my hard, suspicious nature that made me impute mercenary motives to her, I should have pardoned the child's fault. But I was cruelly hard. It is no wonder she refuses to forgive me." "Refuses!" Beatrix echoed, with a start of wonder, as she gazed into his pale, agitated face. "I spoke in the present tense, as if Laurel really existed. A mere slip of the tongue, Mrs. Wentworth," he said, with assumed carelessness.