nature, or rather the accord of two natures, that formed and cemented the tie, and not an accident of birth.  Even when you were an invalid, and I was stupid enough to call you ‘lackadaisical,’ your presence always gave me pleasure.  Often when I had been out all the evening I would say, with vexation, ’I wish I had stayed at home with the little ghost.’  How you used to order me about and tyrannize over me from your sofa when you were half child and half woman!  I can say honestly, Madge, it was never a bore to me, for you had an odd, piquant way of saying and doing things that always amused me; your very weakness was an appeal to my strength, and a claim upon it.  You always appeared to have a sister’s affection for me, and your words and manner proved that I brought some degree of brightness into your shadowed life.  In learning to love you as a sister in all those years, wherein did I ignore nature?  During my absence my feelings did not change in the least, as I proved by my attempts at correspondence, by my greeting when we met.  Then you perplexed and worried me more than you would believe, and I imagined all sorts of ridiculous things about you; but on that drive, after your vigil with that poor, dying girl, I felt that I understood you fully at last.  Indeed, ever since your rescue of the little Wilder child from drowning my old feelings have been coming back with tenfold force.  I can’t help thinking of you, of being proud of you.  I give you my confidence to-night just as naturally and unhesitatingly as if we had been rocked in the same cradle.  I am not wearying you with this long explanation and preamble?”

“No, Graydon,” she replied, in a low tone.

“I am very glad.  I don’t think well of myself to-night at all, and I have a very humiliating confession to make—­one that I could make only to such a sister as you are, or rather would have been, were there a natural tie between us.  I would not tell any Tom, Dick, and Harry friends in the world what I shall now make known to you.  If I didn’t trust you so, I wouldn’t speak of it, for what I shall say involves Henry as well as myself.  Madge, I’ve been duped, I’ve been made both a fool and a tool, and the consequences might have been grave indeed.  Henry, who has so much quiet sagacity, has in some way obtained information that proved of immense importance to him, and absolutely vital to me.  I shudder when I think of what might have happened, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude when I think of my escape.  I told you that Miss Wildmere was humoring that fellow Arnault to save her father, and consequently her mother and the child.  This impression, which was given me so skilfully, and at last confirmed by plain words, was utterly false.  Henry has been in financial danger; Wildmere knew it, and he also knew that Arnault had lent Henry money, which to-day was called in with the hope of breaking him down.  They would have succeeded, too, had he not had resources of which they knew nothing.