Mrs. Pennington was recovering her poise.  There was something irresistibly steadying in her husband’s matter-of-fact statement, and in the sight of her niece sitting back on her heels and looking up at her with lovely, solicitous eyes.  Treachery and deceit became meaningless terms in such connection.

“You haven’t given us a chance to understand, Eleanor.  What is the trouble?” Mr. Pennington demanded.

“Uncle Gerry, I am afraid it is I,” said Margaret Elizabeth, picking up the note from the floor where it had fallen.  “I am sorry, you know I am, that I can’t do as she wishes, but you understand that I can’t.  Tell her, please, that I did honestly try to think I could, but it wasn’t of any use.”

“Oh, come now, Eleanor, if that is it, of course we wanted Margaret Elizabeth up at the Park; but the young people of this generation like to manage their own affairs, as we did before them.”  Mr. Pennington looked quizzically at his niece.  “She’s been getting up a bit of melodrama for our benefit, that’s all.  If you will pardon the suggestion, my dear, I think possibly it is you who do not understand.”

Margaret Elizabeth, rising from her lowly position, threw him a kiss over her aunt’s head.

“How can I be expected to, with everything shrouded in mystery?” cried Mrs. Pennington.  “Why have I never heard of this person before?  Why was I left to be told dreadful things by a reporter?”

“A reporter!” cried Margaret Elizabeth, in her turn aghast.

“Nonsense!  If you heard anything dreadful you know Margaret Elizabeth well enough to know it was not true.  But how in the world could a reporter have got hold of it?”

“You speak so confidently, Gerrard, tell me, what do you know about this man?” Mrs. Pennington looked from her niece to her husband.  “Margaret Elizabeth seems to have completely won you to her side,” she added.

“It is really a very strange story, Eleanor, and to begin at the end of it, we have quite sufficient evidence, in my opinion, to prove that he is the son of my old comrade, Robert Waite.”

Mrs. Pennington fixed surprised eyes upon her husband.  Margaret Elizabeth sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

“You recall how Rob disappeared, without a word to any of his friends?  It was not till some years after the general’s death that I had the least clue to it; then William Knight came to me to know if I could give any help in tracing him.  He owned that there had been some trouble between General Waite and Robert, and that the latter had been unjustly treated.  I couldn’t give him any assistance, and I never discussed it with him again.  Knight was always close-mouthed, and it was only the other day that I learned what the trouble was.  It seems the general suspected his nephew of taking a large sum of money from the safe in his library.  It was one of those cases of complete circumstantial evidence.  Rob was known to have lost money on the races.  He was the only one beside the general himself who had access to the safe, and who knew that this money, several thousand dollars, was there at this time.  That is, so it was supposed.