“I wonder what he’ll be doing next,” said Mary uneasily when she heard the news.

“My dear girl,” gently protested the judge, “you mustn’t be so suspicious.  It will poison your whole life and lead you nowhere.”

Mary thought that over.

“You know the old saying, don’t you?” he continued. “’Suspicion is the seed of discord.’”

“Yes,” nodded Mary, trying to smile, though she still looked troubled.  “I know the old saying—­but—­the trouble is—­I know Uncle Stanley, too, and that’s what bothers me...”

CHAPTER XII

At this point I had meant to tell you more of Wally Cabot—­most perfect, most charming of lovers—­but first I find that I must describe a passage which took place one morning between Mary and Uncle Stanley’s son Burdon.

Perhaps you remember Burdon, the tall, dark young man who “smelled nice” and wore a white edging on the V of his waistcoat.

As far back as Mary could remember him, he had appealed to her imagination.

His Norfolk jackets, his gold cigarette case and match box, his air of distinction, his wealth of black hair which grew to a point on his forehead, even the walking stick which he sometimes carried; to Mary’s mind these had always been properties in a human drama—­a drama breathless with possibilities, written by Destiny and entitled Burdon Woodward.

It is hard to express some things, and this is one of them.  But among your own acquaintances there are probably one or two figures which stand out above the others as though they had been selected by Fate to play strenuous parts—­whether Columbine, clown or star.  Something is always happening to them.  Wherever they appear, they seem to hold the centre of the stage, and when they disappear a dullness falls and life seems flat for a time.  You think of them more often than you realize, perhaps with a smile, perhaps with a frown, and generally you dismiss them from your mind with some such thought as this—­“He’ll get in trouble yet,” or “I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a great man some day”—­or “Something will happen to that girl yet, if she isn’t careful!”

That, in short, was the sort of a character that Burdon Woodward had always been to Mary.  For as long as she could remember him, she had associated him with romance and drama.

To her he had been Raffles, the amateur cracksman.  He had also been Steerforth in David Copperfield—­and time after time she had drowned him in the wreck.  In stories of buccaneers he was the captain—­sometimes Captain Morgan, sometimes Captain Kidd—­or else he was Black Jack with Dora in his power and trembling in the balance whether to become a hero or a villain.  As Mary grew older these associations not only lingered; they strengthened.

Not long before her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars’ worth of diamond rings.  The story was made remarkable by a detail.  An old woman was sitting at the corner, grinding a hand-organ, and as the robber ran past her, he dropped one of the rings into her cup.