"
"Then it was you? I was sure of it." She looked at him earnestly.
"Why should there be any beating about the bush?" she answered. "I
should like it better if you need never have known; but, since you were
sure to find it out sooner or later, it might as well come now. What I
have done is wise and right, the most satisfactory thing to me, and to
others wiser than I. But I wish you would never speak of it."
"Never speak of your coming forward with your whole fortune to make up
the loss that this fellow's claim will be to us? Never speak of it!"
cried Archdale. "And accept it? From you? You certainly have a
flattering opinion of me."
"If it were like any business losses," she said, "it would be different.
But this is something nobody could have been prepared for; it needs
something outside of the routine to meet it." She waited a moment. "Will
you put your case, as you said you were going to do?" she asked. "It
will make it clearer, and you will see that there is nothing
extraordinary. I think you need not say anything more about--about us,
that is all understood. Go on from there."
"A father and a son, then, are nominally in business together," he
answered; "the father does the work; the son has a generous share of the
profits. Matters are going on swimmingly. Suddenly a claimant turns up
who wants a grand slice of the property.
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