friend who told me didn't expatiate much on what he did there, but I
reckon they had a high old time. If he's above the earth I'll find him,
you bet. The yerba buena and the southern wood came all right,--they
smelt like you. Say, Flip, do you remember the _last_--the _very
last_--thing that happened when you said 'good-by' on the trail? Don't
let me ever find out that you've let anybody else kiss"--

But here the virtuous indignation of the Postmaster found vent in an
oath. He threw the letter away. He retained of it only two facts,--Flip
_had_ a brother who was missing; she had a lover present in the flesh.

How much of the substance of this and previous letters Flip had
confided to her father I cannot say. If she suppressed anything it was
probably that which affected Lance's secret alone, and it was doubtful
how much of that she herself knew. In her own affairs she was frank
without being communicative, and never lost her shy obstinacy even with
her father. Governing the old man as completely as she did, she
appeared most embarrassed when she was most dominant; she had her own
way without lifting her voice or her eyes; she seemed oppressed by
_mauvaise honte_ when she was most triumphant; she would end a
discussion with a shy murmur addressed to herself, or a single gesture
of self-consciousness.

The disclosure of her strange relations with an unknown man, and the
exchange of presents and confidences, seemed to suddenly awake Fairley
to a vague, uneasy sense of some unfulfilled duties as a parent. The
first effect of this on his weak nature was a peevish antagonism to the
cause of it. He had long, fretful monologues on the vanity of
diamond-making, if accompanied with "pestering" by "interlopers;" on
the wickedness of concealment and conspiracy, and their effects on