him, now that he was dead, the safest way was to drag it to the light
at once. All things worked together for good to those who loved the
Lord--if you managed them right.

"Of course," she said, as if just finishing a sentence, "you are
indifferent to social rank. And yet it will be no slight advantage to
you that Catharine has no swarm of needy kinsfolk. Her own father died
when she was a baby. Mr. Guinness is the only near friend she has ever
known except myself. He had a son when I married him--" The boy's
name stuck in her throat. For a moment she felt as the murderer
does, forced to touch his victim with his naked hand. "Hugh--Hugh
Guinness--was the lad's name."

"I never heard of him," indifferently.

"No, it is not probable you should. Long before Berrytown was built
he went to Nicaragua. He died there. Well," with a little wave of the
hand, "there you have Kitty's whole family. It will be better that she
should be so untrammeled, for the interests of the school."

"The school? I'm not a Reformatory machine altogether, I suppose!" He
had been watching Catharine, who was moving about in the shop. When
he was not in sight of her he always remembered that she was a mere
child, to be instructed from the very rudiments up after marriage,
and that the Guinnesses were ten degrees, at least, below him in the
social scale. But she was near--she was coming! The complacent smile
went out of his trig little features: he moved his tongue about
to moisten his dry lips before he could speak. He was absolutely
frightened at himself. "There's more than the school to be thought of,
Mrs. Guinness," he blurted out. "I--I love Catharine. And I want this