“Would you feel the same if Alice were involved?” she asked, quietly.

“Alice?” he repeated.

“Yes; suppose this same question came up with her, would you not be the first to insist that the facts be proven?”

“What can I say?” he asked, brokenly.  “This means a public trial and all the scandal that goes with it.  It means a rehearsing of all that past which I have tried to help you to forget.  It means pain and sorrow and suffering to you, dear—­to you whom I would shield with my life from just what now threatens you.”

“A trial, Robert?” Mrs. Gorham asked, looking at him with a startled expression.  “Do you mean that there has to be a trial?”

“Of course,” Gorham replied, wondering at the unexpected change in her attitude.

Suddenly she buried her face against his shoulder and burst into tears.  “Oh, I couldn’t stand that!” she cried.

Gorham gently held her face from him and looked into it kindly but questioningly.  “Why not?” he asked.

“It would kill me,” she replied, not meeting his look.

“Is there anything which the trial could bring out which you have not already told me, Eleanor?” he asked, quietly.

“Don’t you know enough already to understand why I could never live through it?”

Gorham urged no further and caressed her gently, yet there was an expression of distinct disappointment in his face.

“There must be no trial,” he said, firmly.  “You shall be shielded from that and from everything else which threatens to bring you sorrow.  You must leave it all in my hands.”

XXIII

Allen went over the list of names lying on the desk before him for a third time, carefully running down the column with his finger.  Then he leaned back in his chair and reflected.  The single light flooded the desk and cast its shadows out into the great office, but the boy’s eyes never left the papers before him.

“That’s mighty strange,” he said aloud.  “I’ll bet Lady Pat got it straight, but if she did that list ought to show it.”

He leaned forward again and turned to the early pages.  “Courtney, Cousens, Covell, Coveney—­Covington ought to come in right there.”  Then he turned the pages over rapidly—­“Goodrich, Goodspeed, Goodwin, Gordon, Gore—­there isn’t any Gorham there, either.”

For several moments he sat there deep in thought.  Suddenly he rose and struck the top of the desk a resounding blow with his fist.

“Chump!” he cried.  “Of course he didn’t.  Oh, I’m a great business man, I am, thinking he’d buy those shares in his own name or in Alice’s.  It’s back to the dear old farm for me.  Chump!”

He restored the papers to their proper places, picked up Patricia’s bank, which he still had with him, turned out the light, and then tramped down the long flights of stairs to work off his excitement.  He was disappointed not to have succeeded in this first attempt to prove his suspicions, but he found some consolation in the certainty which came to him, even in the face of this defeat, that he was on the right track.