The chief trouble in the mind of Albert was not the probability of imprisonment, nor the overthrow of his educational schemes—­though all of these were cups of bitterness.  But the first thought with him was to ask what would be the effect of his arrest on Miss Minorkey.  He had felt some disappointment in not finding Helen the ideal woman he had pictured her, but, as I said a while ago, love does not die at the first disappointment.  If it finds little to live on in the one who is loved, it will yet find enough in the memories, the hopes, and the ideals that dwell within the lover.  Charlton, in the long night after his arrest, reviewed everything, but in thinking of Miss Minorkey, he did not once recur to her lack of deep sympathy with him in his sorrow for Katy.  The Helen he thought of was the radiant Helen that sat by his beloved Katy in the boat on that glorious evening in which he rowed in the long northern twilight, the Helen that had relaxed her dignity enough to dip her palm in the water and dash spray into his face.  He saw her like one looking back through clouds of blackness to catch a sight of a bit of sky and a single shining star.  As the impossibility of his marrying Helen became more and more evident to him, she grew all the more glorious in her culture, her quietness, her thoughtfulness.  That she would break her heart for him, he did not imagine, but he did hope—­yes, hope—­that she would suffer acutely on his account.

And when Isa Marlay bravely walked through the crowd that had gathered about the place of his confinement, and asked to see him, and he was told that a young lady wanted to be admitted, he hoped that it might be Helen Minorkey.  When he saw that it was Isabel he was glad, partly because he would rather have seen her than anybody else, next to Helen, and partly because he could ask her to carry a message to Miss Minorkey.  He asked her to take from his trunk, which had already been searched by the marshal’s deputy, all the letters of Miss Minorkey, to tie them in a package, and to have the goodness to present them to that lady with his sincere regards.

“Shall I tell her that you are innocent?” asked Isabel, wishing to strengthen her own faith by a word of assurance from Albert.

“Tell her—­” and Albert cast down his eyes a moment in painful reflection—­“tell her that I will explain some day.  Meantime, tell her to believe what you believe about me.”

“I believe that you are innocent.”

“Thank you, Miss Isabel,” said Albert warmly, but then he stopped and grew red in the face.  He did not give her one word of assurance.  Even Isa’s faith was staggered for a moment.  But only for a moment.  The faith of a woman like Isabel Marlay laughs at doubt.