guard your life from every care, every anxiety even—­precaution so necessary in your case, and with your peculiar constitution.  You love my son, or have loved him—­in this I could not be mistaken—­and his affection for you is sincere and unaffected, despite the concessions a designing woman, who conceives herself slighted, has wrung from his unwary lips, on purpose to mar his prospects, and blight your happiness, I well believe.”

“No, no, there was no design of this kind on her part, of that I am sure.  She could not—­did not know that I overheard them.  You must do her justice there—­I trust she may never know it.  Claude promised me—­”

“I know, I know—­it was with this understanding,” he interrupted, “that he confided to me the extent of his indiscretion, for which I have rated him soundly, I assure you.  Evelyn is not to know that you overheard them.  This is the compact—­a very sensible and politic one on your part, under the circumstances, for Evelyn, we all know, is, excuse me my dear, the devil, when fairly aroused.  Now, as to this overhearing of yours—­might not your mind, laboring under recent coma, and a sort of mental mirage as it were, have had a tendency to magnify and only partially comprehend the conversation thus suddenly forced upon your attention?  For I understand you were unable to make yourself heard at all, or even to give signs of life when the curtains of your bed were lifted by the interlocutors.”

“This last is true—­but that I could not have been mistaken, Claude’s own admissions confirm.  He denied nothing that I suggested—­much was left by me unquestioned.”

“Yes,” catching wildly at this straw, “he finds himself quite in the dark still, I perceive—­as to the accusations brought against him; suppose you make your charges one by one, as it were in the shape of specifications?”

“There are no charges, no accusations brought—­nothing of that sort,” I said, proudly; “and I must entreat that from this hour, Mr. Bainrothe, this subject be dropped between us utterly.  It is wholly unprofitable, believe me.”

“You are a person of extraordinary obduracy,” he said, “for one of your years.  I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked resolution!  If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a formal contract—­one your father sanctioned, one of which all your friends are and were cognizant and proud, and which has subjected him, in its rupture, to so much distress and mortification; nay, even as I can prove, pecuniary loss.”

“If money can repay your son Claude, for any wrong I have done him, he is welcome to a portion of mine,” I said, deeply disgusted, “without intervention of law—­painful exposure of any kind.  I cherish for him, however, even yet, too much regard and respect to believe him capable of such proceedings.  The idea is worthy of the mind it springs from—­worthy of the author of all this sorrow and confusion—­worthy of Mr. Basil Bainrothe, the arch-conspirator himself.”