217;t see her any more than I can help. I suppose she must stay at the house till—I told Steptoe to look after her.”

She took a position at one end of the mantelpiece, while he faced her from the other. She gave him wise counsel. He was to see his lawyers at once and tell them the whole story. Lawyers always saw the way out of things. There was the Bellington boy who married a show-girl. She had been bought off, and the lawyers had managed it. Now the Bellington boy was happily married to one of the Plantagenet Jones girls and lived at Marillo Park. Then there was the Silliman boy who had married the notorious Kate Cookesley. The lawyers had found the way out of that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary of the American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such as had happened to Rash were regrettable of course, but it would be folly to think that a perfectly good life must be done for just because it had got a crack in it.

“We’ll play the game, of course,” she wound up. “But it’s a game, and the stronger side must win. 70 What should you say of my going to see her—she needn’t know who I am further than that I’m a friend of yours—and finding out for myself?”

“Finding out what?”

“Finding out her price, silly. What do you suppose? A woman can often see things like that where a man would be blind.”

He didn’t know. He thought it might be worth while. He would leave it to her. “I’m not worth the trouble, Barbe,” he said humbly.

With this she agreed. “I know you’re not. I can’t think for a minute why I take it or why I should like you. But I do. That’s straight.”

“And I adore you, Barbe.”

She shrugged her shoulders with a little, comic grimace. &#8220