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“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.”