with you. I am sorry for poor Baring, as I showed by ordering this portrait. You and I together may help him and his sister to live, eh? You have some one who supplies you with money?"—this with a peculiarly offensive leer—"and you are charitable. Well, let me be your banker, instead of that other one. The Barings shall have all they want, and not know where it comes from."
Before she had time to more than flash an indignant rejoinder from, her dark eyes, Alaric was in the room again. He glanced from one to the other.
"My sister would be glad to speak to you, Miss Shaw." And Elizabeth, without another word, without even bowing to Melchior, swept from the room.
The difficulty in which she found herself placed was great. This detestable Jew's insult did not trouble her; but his knowledge of her secret, his possible betrayal, did. She would not for the world that Alaric Baring should learn the truth; it would vitiate their pleasant position of equality that she should appear as his benefactress, and she clung so strongly to the desire that this one man, at least, should not think of her as rich, until——— There she broke off; she would not put a limit to the length of his ignorance. But had she not registered a mental vow that she would marry no man who asked her, knowing her wealth? It was from opposite causes to those which made her register that vow, though arriving at the same result, that she dreaded this knowledge reaching the proud sensitive American. She knew him well now; she had not a doubt as to how he would behave, even if he grew to care for her—and sometimes she had a curious
