The Law-Breakers

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Title:     The Law-Breakers
Author: Robert Grant [More Titles by Grant]

I

George Colfax was in an outraged frame of mind, and properly so. Politically speaking, George was what might be called, for lack of a better term, a passive reformer. That is, he read religiously the New York _Nation_, was totally opposed to the spoils system of party rewards, and was ostensibly as right-minded a citizen as one would expect to find in a Sabbath day's journey. He subscribed one dollar a year to the civil-service reform journal, and invariably voted on Election Day for the best men, cutting out in advance the names of the candidates favored by the Law and Order League of his native city, and carrying them to the polls in order to jog his memory. He could talk knowingly, too, by the card, of the degeneracy of the public men of the nation, and had at his finger-ends inside information as to the manner in which President This or Congressman That had sacrificed the ideals of a vigorous manhood to the brass idol known as a second term. In fact, there was scarcely a prominent political personage in the country for whom George had a good word in every-day conversation. And when the talk was of municipal politics he shook his head with a profundity of gloom which argued an utterly hopeless condition of affairs--a sort of social bottomless pit.

And yet George was practically passive. He voted right, but, beyond his yearly contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating--an alluring combination to the sex which always likes a moral frame for its fancies.

It was to a woman that George was unbosoming his distress on this particular occasion, and, as has been already indicated, his indignation and disgust were entirely justified. Her name was Miss Mary Wellington, and she was the girl whom he wished with all his heart to marry. It was no hasty conclusion on his part. He knew her, as he might have said, like a book, from the first page to the last, for he had met her constantly at dances and dinners ever since she "came out" seven years before, and he was well aware that her physical charms were supplemented by a sympathetic, lively, and independent spirit. One mark of her independence--the least satisfactory to him--was that she had refused him a week before; or, more accurately speaking, the matter had been left in this way: she had rejected him for the time being in order to think his offer over. Meanwhile he had decided to go abroad for sixty days--a shrewd device on his part to cause her to miss him--and here he was come to pay his adieus, but bubbling over at the same time with what he called the latest piece of disregard for public decency on the part of the free-born voter.

"Just think of it. The fellow impersonated one of his heelers, took the civil-service examination in the heeler's name, and got the position for him. He was spotted, tried before a jury who found him guilty, and was sentenced to six months in jail. The day he was discharged, an admiring crowd of his constituents escorted him from prison with a brass band and tendered him a banquet. Yesterday he was chosen an alderman by the ballots of the people of this city. A self-convicted falsifier and cheat! A man who snaps his fingers in the face of the laws of the country! Isn't that a commentary on the workings of universal suffrage?" This was a caustic summing up on George's part of the story he had already told Miss Wellington piecemeal, and he looked at her as much as to ask if his dejection were not amply justified.

"It's a humiliating performance certainly," she said. "I don't wonder you are exercised about it. Are there no extenuating circumstances?" Miss Wellington appeared duly shocked; yet, being a woman of an alert and cheery disposition, she reached out instinctively for some palliative before accepting the affair in all its stark offensiveness.

"None which count--none which should weigh for a moment with any one with patriotic impulses," he answered. "The plea is that the people down there--Jim Daly's constituents--have no sympathy with the civil-service examination for public office, and so they think it was rather smart of him than otherwise to get the better of the law. In other words, that it's all right to break a law if one doesn't happen to fancy it. A nation which nurses that point of view is certain to come to grief."

Mary nodded gravely. "It's a dangerous creed--dangerous, and a little specious, too. And can nothing be done about it? About Daly, I mean?"

"No. He's an alderman-elect, and the hero of his district. A wide-awake, square-dealing young man with no vices, as I heard one of his admirers declare. By the time I return from my trip to the Mediterranean I expect they will be booming him for Congress."

Looking at the matter soberly, Mary Wellington perceived that Jim Daly's performance was a disreputable piece of business, which merited the censure of all decent citizens. Having reached this conclusion, she dismissed George Colfax on his travels with a sense of satisfaction that he viewed the affair with such abhorrence. For, much as she liked George, her hesitation to become his wife and renounce the bachelor-girl career to which, since her last birthday--her twenty-fifth--she had felt herself committed, was a sort of indefinable suspicion as to the real integrity of his standards. He was an excellent talker, of course; his ideals of public life and private ethics, as expressed in drawing-rooms, or during pleasant dialogues when they were alone together, were exemplary. But every now and then, while he discoursed picturesquely of the evils of the age and the obligations of citizenship, it would occur to her to wonder how consistent he would be in case his principles should happen to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his class, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were his moral perceptions genuinely delicate?

However, she liked him so well that she was anxious to believe her questionings groundless. Accordingly, his protestations of repugnance at Jim Daly's conduct were reassuring. For though they were merely words, his denunciation appeared heartfelt and to savor of clean and nice appreciation of the distinction between truth and falsehood. Indeed, she was half-inclined to call him back to tell him that she had changed her mind and was ready to take him for better or for worse. But she let him go, saying to herself that she could live without him perfectly well for the next sixty days, and that the voyage would do him good. Were she to become his wife, it would be necessary to give up the Settlement work in which she had become deeply interested as the result of her activities as a bachelor-girl. She must be certain that he was all she believed him to be before she admitted that she loved him and burned her philanthropical bridges.

Returning to her quarters in the heart of the city, Mary Wellington became so absorbed in her work of bringing cheer and relief to the ignorant and needy that she almost forgot George Colfax. Yet once in a while it would occur to her that it would be very pleasant if he should drop in for a cup of tea, and she would wonder what he was doing. Did she, perchance, at the same time exert herself with an ardor born of an acknowledged inkling that these might be the last months of her service? However that may have been, she certainly was very busy, and responded eagerly to every call upon her sympathy.

Among the cases of distress brought to her attention which interested her most was that of two children whose mother had just died. Their father was a drinking man--a reeling sot who had neglected his family for years. His wife, proud in her destitution, had worked her fingers to the bone to maintain a tenement-roof over the heads of their two little boys and to send them neat and properly nourished to school. This labor of love had been too much for her strength, and finally she had fallen a victim to consumption. This was shortly after her necessities had become known to the Settlement to which Mary Wellington belonged. The dying mother besought her visitor to keep watch over her boys, which Mary promised faithfully to do.

The waifs, Joe and Frank, were two bright-eyed youngsters of eleven and nine. They stood so well in their classes at school that Mary resolved that their attendance should not be interrupted during the interval while a new home was being found for them. She accompanied them to the school-house, on the morning after the funeral, in order to explain the situation to their teacher and evince her personal interest. Miss Burke was a pretty girl two or three years younger than herself. She looked capable and attractive; a little coquettish, too, for her smile was arch, and her pompadour had that fluffy fulness which girls who like to be admired nowadays are too apt to affect. She was just the sort of girl whom a man might fall desperately in love with, and it occurred to Mary, as they conversed, that it was not likely she would remain a public-school teacher long.

Miss Burke evidently knew the art of ingratiating herself with her pupils. Joe and Frank smiled bashfully, but contentedly, under her sympathetic, sunny welcome. The two young women exchanged a few words, the sequel of which was that Mary Wellington accepted the invitation to remain and observe how the youthful mind was inoculated with the rudiments of knowledge by the honeyed processes of the modern school system. While the teacher stepped to the blackboard to write some examples before the bell should ring, Joe, the elder of the two orphans, utilized the occasion to remark in a low voice intended for Mary's ear:

"She's Jim Daly's mash."

Mary, who failed on the instant to grasp the meaning of this piece of eloquent information, invited the urchin to repeat it, which he did with the sly unction of one proud of his secret. Mary laughed to herself. Some girls would have repressed the youthful gossip, but she was human. Somehow, too, the name sounded familiar.

"Who's Jim Daly, Joe?"

"He's the boss of the Ninth Ward."

"The Daly who has just been elected alderman?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Then Mary understood. "Really, Joe!" she said in the stage whisper necessary to the situation.

"Maybe she's going to be married after Easter," the guileless prattler continued, to make his confidence complete.

"Then you and Frank would lose her." This was the answer which rose to Mary's lips, partly prompted, doubtless, by her own instinctive aversion to the match.

The suggestion of another loss worked upon Joe's susceptible feelings. Evidently he had not taken this side of the matter into consideration, and he put up one of his hands to his eyes. Fortunately the bell for the opening of the session broke in upon the conversation, and not only diverted him, but relegated the whole subject to the background for the time being. Nevertheless, the thought of it continued in Mary's mind as she sat listening to the exercises. How could an attractive girl like this take a fancy to such a trickster? It seemed totally incompatible with the teacher's other qualities, for in her attitude toward her pupils she appeared discerning and conscientious.

When the time came to go, Mary referred to her connection with the Settlement work in the course of the few minutes' further conversation which they had together. Miss Burke expressed so lively an interest in this that it was agreed before they parted that the schoolmistress should pay Mary a visit some day later in the week, with the twofold object of taking tea with the two orphans and of being shown the workings of the establishment.

At this subsequent interview, the two young women chatted briskly in a cosey corner. Each found the other sympathetic, despite Mary's secret prejudice; and it happened presently that Miss Burke, whose countenance now and again had seemed a little pensive, as though she had something on her mind, said after a pause:

"I'd like to ask your advice about something, Miss Wellington, if you don't object."

Mary thought she knew what was coming, surprising as it was to be consulted. She smiled encouragingly.

"It's about a gentleman friend of mine," continued Miss Burke, with rising color, "who wishes me to marry him. Perhaps you have heard of him," she added with a suggestion of furtive pride. "His name is Jim Daly."

"I know all about him."

Miss Burke was evidently not prepared for such a sweeping answer. "You know what he did, then?" she asserted after a moment's hesitation.

"He pretended to be some one else, and passed a civil-service examination, wasn't it?"

"Yes. I can tell by your tone that you think it was disreputable. So do I, Miss Wellington; though some of my friends say that it was Jim's desire to help a friend which led him to do it. But he had to serve his time in jail, didn't he?" She looked as though she were going to cry. Then she said awkwardly: "What I wished to ask was whether you would marry him if you were I."

Mary frowned. The responsibility was disconcerting. "Do you love him?" she asked plumply.

"I did love him; I suppose I do still; yes, I do." She jerked out her answers in quick succession. "But our engagement is broken."

"Because of this?"

"Because he has been in jail. None of my family has ever been in jail." Miss Burke set in place the loose hairs of her pompadour with a gesture of severe dignity as she spoke.

"And he knows, of course, that his dishonesty is the reason why you feel that you cannot trust him?" inquired Mary, who, being a logical person, regarded the last answer as not altogether categorical.

"It wasn't like stealing," said the girl, by way of resenting the phrase.

"It was dishonorable and untrue."

"The people down my way don't think much of the civil-service laws. They call them frills, something to get round if you can. That's how they excuse him." She spoke with nervous rapidity and a little warmth.

"But they are our country's laws just the same. And a good man--a patriotic man--ought not to break them." Mary was conscious of voicing George Colfax's sentiments as well as her own. The responsibility of the burden imposed on her was trying, and she disliked her part of mentor. Nevertheless, she felt that she must not abstain from stating the vital point clearly; so she continued:

"Is not the real difficulty, my dear, that the man who could be false in one thing might be false in another when the occasion arose?"

Miss Burke flushed at the words, and suddenly covered her face with her hands.

"That's it, of course. That's what haunts me. I could forgive him the other--the having been in jail and all that; but it's the possibility that he might do something worse after we were married--when it was too late--which frightens me. 'False in one thing, false in everything,' that's what the proverb is. Do you believe that is true, Miss Wellington?"

Her unmasked conscience revealed clearly the distress caused by its own sensitiveness; but she spoke beseechingly, as though to invite comfort from her companion on the score of this adage.

"Tell me what sort of a man Mr. Daly is in other respects," said Mary.

"Oh, he's kind!" she answered with enthusiasm. "He has been a good son and brother; he is always helping people, and has more friends than any one in the district. I don't see why he cared for me," she added with seeming irrelevance.

"It's a great point in his favor that he does care for you, my dear. Is he steady at his work?"

"When he isn't too busy with politics. He says that he will give them up, if I insist; but my doing so might prevent his being chosen to Congress." There was again rueful pride in her plaint.

Mary sat silent for a moment. "He stands convicted of falsehood." She seemed to be speaking to herself.

"Yes," gasped the girl, as her mentor paused to let the fell substantive be weighed.

"That seems terrible to me. But you know him better than I do."

Miss Burke's face lighted at the qualification. Yet her quick intelligence refused to be thus cajoled. "But what would you do in my place? That's what I wish to know."

Mary winced. She perceived the proud delicacy of the challenge, and recognized that she had condescendingly shirked the real inquiry.

"It is so hard to put oneself in another's place. The excuses you have given for his conduct seem to me inadequate. That is, if a man gave those reasons to me--I believe I could never trust him again." Mary spoke with conviction, but she realized that she felt like a grandmother.

"Thank you," said Miss Burke. "That's what I wished to know." She looked at the floor for an instant. "Suppose you felt that you could trust him?"

Mary smiled and reflected. "If I loved him enough for that, I dare say I should forgive him."

"You really would?" Then Miss Burke perceived that in her elation she had failed to observe the logical inconsistency which the counsel contained. "I don't know that I understand exactly," she added.

Mary smiled again, then shook her head. "I doubt if I can make it any plainer than that. I mean that--if I were you--I should have to feel absolutely sure that I loved him; and even then--" She paused without completing the ellipsis. "As to that, dear, no one can enlighten you but yourself.'

"Of course," said poor Miss Burke. Yet she was already beginning to suspect that the sphinx-like utterance might contain both the kernel of eternal feminine truth and the real answer to her own doubts.

II

Some two months later the _Meteoric_, one of the fast ocean greyhounds, was approaching the port of New York. At sight of land the cabin passengers, who had been killing time resignedly in one another's society, became possessed with a rampant desire to leave the vessel as soon as possible. When it was definitely announced that the _Meteoric_ would reach her dock early enough in the afternoon to enable them to have their baggage examined and get away before dark, they gave vent to their pent-up spirits in mutual congratulations and adieus.

Among those on board thus chafing to escape from the limitations of an ocean voyage was George Colfax, whose eagerness to land was enhanced by the hope that his absence had made the heart of his lady-love fonder. His travels had been restful and stimulating; but there is nothing like one's own country, after all. So he reflected as, cigar in mouth, he perused the newspapers which the pilot had brought, and watched the coast-line gradually change to the familiar monuments of Manhattan.

Yet apparently there was a subconsciousness to his thought, for as he folded his last newspaper and stretched himself with the languor of a man no longer harried by lack of knowledge as to what has happened during the last seven days, he muttered under his breath:

"Confound the customs anyway!"

A flutter of garments and a breezy voice brought him politely to his feet.

"That's over with, thank Heaven!" The speaker was a charming woman from Boston, whose society he had found engrossing during the voyage--a woman of the polite world, voluble and well informed.

"I just signed and swore to the paper they gave me without reading it," she added, with a gay shrug of her shoulders, as though she were well content with this summary treatment of a distasteful matter. "Have you made your declaration yet?" she asked indifferently.

"No."

"What I don't understand is why they should make you take oath to a thing and then rummage through your trunks as though they didn't believe you."

"It's an outrage--an infernal outrage," said George. "Every time the Government does it the spirit of American institutions is insulted."

"I haven't much with me this time, anyway; they can hardly expect that a person will go to Europe for six months and not bring back more than one hundred dollars' worth of things," continued Miss Golightly artlessly. "One might almost as well stay at home. It isn't as if I bought them to sell. They are my own ownty donty effects, and I've no intention of paying the Government one cent on them if I can help it. And they charge one for presents. Of course, I won't pay on presents I have bought to give other people. That would simply make them cost so much more."

"The whole thing is a wretched and humiliating farce," was George's not altogether illuminating comment on this naive revelation of the workings of the female mind. He spoke doggedly, and then hummed the refrain of a song as though to keep up his courage.

"Well, I'll go and take my turn," he said, with the air of aristocratic urbanity which made him a favorite in social circles.

Miss Golightly detained him to add: "If you find any better method, I wish you'd let me know. It seemed the simplest way not to declare anything, and to trust to luck."

So great was the bustle and confusion that George was not conscious of the presence of his lively companion again until he heard her voice in his ear two hours later on the pier or platform where the baggage from the _Meteoric_ was being inspected.

"Well," she said under her breath, "I'm all through. They gave me a jewel of a man. And you?"

"I've had no trouble." George spoke with nonchalance as if to imply that he had expected none. Out of the corner of his eye he was following the actions of the custom-house official allotted to him who was chalking his examined trunks with the hieroglyphics which signified that the Government had released its grip on them.

This done, George beckoned to an attendant porter, after which he turned again to Miss Golightly.

"If you'll wait a moment until I see these things of mine safely in the hands of the transfer express, I'll put you into your carriage and take a fond farewell."

"You needn't hurry," was her answer.

"My friend, Miss Pilgrim, has declared thirty-four articles, and she doesn't know in which of her eight trunks any of them are. She and the citizen in glasses meted out to her, who insists on finding every one, are now engaged in ransacking her entire wardrobe. I intend to keep at a safe distance from the scene of worry. That's what comes of being conscientious."

George and the inspector, preceded by the porter wheeling the traveller's three trunks, hat-box, and small bags, set out for the other end of the shed.

George returned ten minutes later; he stepped briskly and was beaming.

"Still waiting, I see," he said jocularly.

"And in your eyes I read the purple light of love, young man. I wish you success." Her words were the rallying outcome of confidences on shipboard after five days at sea.

George blushed, but looked pleased. "You may see her first," he said, "for she is constantly at her cousin's, or was before she took up Settlement life."

"How much did you give him?" asked Miss Golightly.

The reversion to their previous topic was so abrupt and barefaced that the lover stared for a moment, then tried not to appear confused.

"Oh, a mere trifle!" he said with offhand dignity.

"I gave mine twenty-five dollars," she whispered. "Wasn't that enough?"

"Abundant, I should say. But I am not well posted on such matters." It was evident he wished to avoid the subject, and was also impatient to get away, for he took out his watch. "If Miss Pilgrim is really likely to be detained--" he began.

Miss Golightly rose to the occasion and dismissed him. "I understand," she exclaimed amiably. "Every minute is precious."

Nevertheless, it was not until two days later that he succeeded in finding Mary Wellington at home. He called that evening, but was told by the person in charge that she had taken a brief respite from work and would not return for another twenty-four hours. On the second occasion, as the first, he brought with him under his arm a good-sized package, neatly done up.

"I am back again," he said, and he pressed her hand with unmistakable zeal.

Her greeting was friendly; not emotional like his, or unreserved; but he flattered himself that she seemed very glad to see him. He reflected: "I don't believe that it did my cause a particle of harm to let her go without the constant visits she had grown accustomed to expect."

He said aloud: "I came across this on the other side and took the liberty of bringing it to you."

Mary undid the parcel, disclosing a beautiful bit of jade; not too costly a gift for a friend to accept, yet really a defiance of the convention which forbids marriageable maidens to receive from their male admirers presents less perishable than flowers or sweetmeats.

"It is lovely, and it was very kind of you to remember me."

"Remember you? You were in my thoughts day and night."

She smiled to dispel the tension. "I shall enjoy hearing about your travels. A friend of yours has told me something of them."

"Ah! Miss Golightly. You have seen her, then, at your cousin's? A companionable woman; and she knows her Europe. Yes, we compared notes regarding our travels."

He colored slightly, but only at the remembrance of having confided to this comparative stranger his bosom's secret under the spell of an ocean intimacy.

"You brought home other things, I dare say?" Mary asked after a pause, glancing up at him.

"Oh, yes!" The trend of the question was not clear to him, but he was impelled to add: "For one thing, I ordered clothes enough to last me three years at least. I bought gloves galore for myself and for my sister. As I belong to the working class, and there is no knowing how soon I may be able to get away again, I laid in a stock of everything which I needed, or which took my fancy. Men's things as well as women's are so much cheaper over there if one knows where to go."

"With the duties?"

The words, gently spoken, were like a bolt from the blue. George betrayed his distaste for the inquiry only by a sudden gravity. "Yes, with the duties." He hastened to add: "But enough of myself and my travels. They were merely to pass the time." He bent forward from his chair and interrogated her meaningly with his glance.

"But I am interested in duties."

He frowned at her insistence.

"Miss Golightly," continued Mary, "explained to us yesterday how she got all her things through the custom-house by giving the inspector twenty-five dollars. She gloried in it and in the fact that, though her trunks were full of new dresses, she made oath that she had nothing dutiable."

He suspected now her trend, yet he was not certain that he was included in its scope. But he felt her eyes resting on him searchingly.

"Did she?" he exclaimed, with an effort at airy lightness which seemed to afford the only hope of escape.

"How did you manage?"

"I?" He spoke after a moment's pause with the calm of one who slightly resents an invasion of his privacy.

"Did you pay the duties on your things?"

George realized now that he was face to face with a question which, as lawyers say, required that the answer should be either "yes" or "no." Still, he made one more attempt to avert the crucial inquiry.

"Does this really interest you?"

"Immensely. My whole future may be influenced by it."

"I see." There was no room left for doubt as to her meaning. Nor did he choose to lie. "No, I paid no duties."

"I feared as much."

There was a painful silence. George rose, and walking to the mantel-piece, looked down at the hearth and tapped the ironwork with his foot. He would fain have made the best of what he ruefully recognized to be a shabby situation by treating it jocosely; but her grave, grieved demeanor forbade. Yet he ventured to remark:

"Why do you take this so seriously?"

"I expected better things of you."

He felt of his mustache and essayed extenuation. "It was--er--unworthy of me, of course; foolish--pig-headed--tricky, I suppose. I got mad. I'd nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I'm terribly sorry, for you seem to hate it so. But it's an idiotic and impertinent law, anyway."

"In other words, you think it all right to break a law if you don't happen to fancy it."

George started visibly and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his, but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to evade it by an attempt at banter. "You can't make a tragedy, my dear girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few things bought for one's personal use, and not for sale. Why, nearly every woman in the world smuggles when she gets the chance--on her clothes and finery. You must know that. Your sex as a class doesn't regard it as disreputable in the least. At the worst, it is a peccadillo, not a crime. The law was passed to enable our native tailors to shear the well-to-do public."

Mary ignored the plausible indictment against the unscrupulousness of her sex. "Can such an argument weigh for a moment with any one with patriotic impulses?"

Again the parrot-like reminder caused him to wince, and this time he recognized the application.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, with sorry yet protesting confusion.

"It's the inconsistency," she answered without flinching, perceiving that he understood.

George flushed to the roots of his hair. "You compare me with that--er--blatherskite?" he asked, conscious as he spoke that her logic was irrefutable. Yet his self-respect cried out to try to save itself.

"Why not? The civil-service law seemed a frill to Jim Daly; the customs law an impertinence to you."

He looked down at the hearth again. There was an air of finality in her words which was disconcerting.

"I've been an ass," he ejaculated. "I'll give the things up; pay the duties; go to prison, if you like. The punishment is fine or imprisonment." He intended to be sincere in his offer of self-humiliation, though his speech savored of extravagance.

Mary shrugged her shoulders. "If you did, I dare say a bevy of society women would tender you a banquet when you were released from jail."

He bit his lip and stared at her. "You are taking this seriously with a vengeance!"

"I must."

He crossed the room and, bending beside her, sought to take her hand. "Do you mean that but for this--? Mary, are you going to let a little thing like this separate us?"

He had captured her fingers, but they lay limp and unresponsive in his.

"It is not a little thing; from my standpoint it is everything."

"But you will give me another chance?"

"You have had your chance. That was it. I was trying to find out whether I loved you, and now I know that I do not. I could never marry a man I could not--er--trust."

"Trust?" I swear to you that I am worthy of trust."

She smiled sadly and drew away her hand. "Maybe. But I shall never know, you see, because I do not love you."

Her feminine inversion of logic increased his dismay. "I shall never give up," he exclaimed, rising and buttoning his coat. "When you think this over you will realize that you have exaggerated what I did."

She shook her head. His obduracy made no impression on her, for she was free from doubts.

"We will be friends, if you like; but we can never be anything closer."

An inspiration seized him. "What would the girl whom Jim Daly loves, if there is one, say? She has never given him up, I wager."

Mary blushed at his unconscious divination. "I do not know," she said. "But you are one person, Jim Daly is another. You have had every advantage; he is a--er--blatherskite. Yet you condescend to put yourself on a par with him, and condone the offence on the ground that your little world winks at it. Remember

"'Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues.'

How shall society progress, unless my sex insists on at least that patent of nobility in the men who woo us? I am reading you a lecture, but you insisted on it."

George stood for a moment silent. "You are right, I suppose." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he turned and left the room.

As he passed out, Mary heard the voices of the orphans, Joe and Frank, in the entry. The former in greeting her held out a letter which had just been delivered by the postman.

"You've come back, Miss Wellington," cried the little boy rapturously.

"Yes, Joe dear."

Mechanically she opened the envelope. As she read the contents she smiled faintly and nodded her head as much as to say that the news was not unexpected.

"But _noblesse oblige_," she murmured to herself proudly, not realizing that she had spoken aloud.

"What did you say, Miss Wellington?"

Mary recalled her musing wits. "I've something interesting to tell you, boys. Miss Burke is going to be married to Jim Daly. That is bad for you, dears, but partly to make up for it, I wish to let you know that there is no danger of my leaving you any more."

-THE END-
Robert Grant's short story: The Law-Breakers

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