“Pardon me,” replied Daintree in his most elaborate manner. “I know at least as much of the young man as does Miss Harding; his case has already excited her sympathy; he has therefore the very strongest claim upon mine.”
“Oh, but you must not do it!” cried Claire, impulsively. “It is too much for you to dream of doing! I am sorry I ever said a word about it! You are too noble, too generous, too good!”
He hung his head a moment, and then exclaimed, with the extraordinary passion of the man, that there was nothing he would not do to win such words from her lips; that she had repaid him already a hundred-fold.
“And remember, it is all for you,” he added, suddenly, as though he had caught her candour. “Let there be no mistake about that between you and me. Whatever I may do is not done for yonder prisoner, but for you and you alone!”
“For me!” whispered Claire; and she could say no more, thinking her voice had already bewrayed her.
“Yes; every bit for you!”
“But how can that be? He is nothing to us either. We did not know the family—you heard of the quarrel? And the young man was very seldom there, never once in our house.” So she still swerved instinctively at the lie direct, and despised herself more than if she had told a dozen. The situation was intolerable to her. She was on the brink of a rash confession, and such an appeal to Daintree’s magnanimity as should move a stone, when he took the last word and left her time to think.
“Miss Harding,” said he, earnestly, “I care not a jot what you may think of this case on mature consideration. I know how it appealed to you the other night, before
