Through these three years he had been a close student.  Far into the night he pored over his books, and, too proud to go to school, he hired a teacher and was taught privately.  At twenty he was quite as well educated as nine-tenths of the young men now turned out by our fashionable colleges.

Rumors of Margie Harrison’s triumphs reached him constantly, for Margie was a belle and a beauty now.  Her parents were dead, and she had been left to the guardianship of Mr. Trevlyn, at whose house she made her home, and where she reigned a very queen.  Old Trevlyn’s heart at last found something beside his diamonds to worship, and Margie had it all her own way.

She came into the store of Belgrade and Co. one day, and asked to look at some laces.  Trevlyn was the only clerk disengaged, and with a very changeable face he came forward to attend to her.  He felt that she would recognize him at once—­that she would remember where she had seen him the last time—­a house-breaker!  She held his reputation in her keeping.

His hand trembled as he took down the laces—­she glanced at his face.  A start of surprise—­a conscious, painful blush swept over her face.  He dropped the box, and the rich laces fell over her feet.

“Pardon me,” he said hurriedly, and, stooping to pick them up, the little glove he had stolen on that night, and which he wore always in his bosom, fell out, and dropped among the laces.

She picked it up with a little cry.

“The very glove that I lost four years ago!  And you are—­” she stopped suddenly.

He paled to the lips, but, lifting his head proudly, said:  “Go on.  Finish the sentence.  I can bear it.”

“No, I will not go on.  Let the memory die, I knew you then, but you were so young, and had to bear so much among temptations!  And the other was a villain.  No, I am silent.  You are safe.”

He stooped, and, lifting the border of her shawl, kissed it reverently.

“If I live,” he said solemnly, “you will be glad you have been so merciful.  Some time I shall hear you say so.”

She did not purchase any laces.  She went out forgetful of her errand, and Arch was so awkward for the remainder of the day, and committed so many blunders, that his fellow-clerks laughed at him unrebuked, and Mr. Belgrade seriously wondered if Trevlyn had not been taking too much champagne.

* * * * *

Margie Harrison and her guardian sat at breakfast.  Mr. Trevlyn showed his years very plainly.  He was nearly seventy-five—­he looked eighty.

Margie looked very lovely this morning and it was of this the old man was thinking as he glanced at her across the table.  She had more than fulfilled the promise of her childhood.  The golden hair was chestnut now, and pushed behind her ears in heavy rippling masses of light and shadow.  Her eyes had taken a deeper tone—­they were like wells whose depth you could not guess at.  Her features were delicately irregular, the forehead low, broad and white; her chin was dimpled as an infant’s, and her mouth still ripe and red, as a damask rosebud.  She wore a pink muslin wrapper, tied with white ribbons, and in her hair drooped a cluster of apple-blossoms.