“Snow-white, and you know as well as I do that you asked Mr. Lindsay to bring him to me soon after you left me at V——.”

“Indeed!  Was I guilty of so foolish a thing?  Did you thank me for the present?”

“I asked dear Mr. Hargrove to tell you when he wrote that I was exceedingly grateful for your kindness.”

“Certainly it appears so.  All these years the dog was not worth even a simple note of thanks; now all the banks in Gotham cannot buy him.”

The chill irony of his tone painfully embarrassed her.

“You positively refuse to sell him to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because you love him?”

“Because I love him more than I can ever make you comprehend.”

“You regard me as a dullard in comprehending canine qualities?”

“I did not say so.”

“Do you really find yourself possessed of any sentiment of gratitude toward me?  If so, will you do me a favour?”

“Certainly, if I can.”

“Thank you.  I shall always feel exceedingly obliged.  Pray do not look so uneasy, and grow so white; it is a small matter.  I gave you the dog years ago, little dreaming that I was thereby providing future discord for my own hearthstone.  With a degree of flattering delicacy, which I assure you I appreciate, you decline to sell what was a friendly gift; and now I simply appeal to your generosity, and ask you please to give him back to me.”

She recoiled a step, and her fingers clutched each other.

“Oh, Mr. Palma!  Don’t ask me.  I cannot give up my Hero.  I would give you anything, everything else that I own.”

“Rash little girl!  What else have you to give?  Yourself?”

He was smiling now, and the unbending of his lips, and glitter of his remarkably fine teeth, gave a strange charm to his countenance, generally so grave.

“You would give yourself away, sooner than that unlucky dog?”

“I belong to my mother.  But he belongs to me, and I never, never will part with him!”

“Jacta est alea!” muttered the lawyer, still smiling.

“Mr. Palma, I hope you will excuse me.  It may seem very selfish and obstinate in me, and perhaps it really is so, but I can’t help it.  I am so lonely now, and Hero is all that I have left to comfort me.  Still I know as well as you or any one else, that it would be very wrong and unkind to force him into a house where dogs are particularly disliked; and therefore we will annoy no one here,—­we will go away.”

“Will you?  Where?”

He rose, and they stood side by side.

Her face wore its old childish look of patient pain, reminding him of the time when she stood with the cluster of lilies drooping against her heart.  He saw that tears had gathered in her eyes, tendering them larger, more wistful.

“I do not know yet.  Anywhere that you think best, until we can write and get mother’s permission for me to go to her.  Will you not please use your influence with her?”