"No; this is mine!" he denied her. "Not yours or your father's. You have nothing to do with this. Didn't he try in little cowardly ways to keep you out of it? But he couldn't do that; your friendship meant too much to him; he couldn't keep away from you. But I can—I can do that! You must go out of this house; you must never come in here again!"
Her eyes filled, as she watched him; never had she liked him so much as now, as he moved to open the door for her.
"I thought," he said almost wistfully, "it seemed to me that, whatever he had done, it must have been mostly against me. His leaving everything to me seemed to mean that I was the one that he had wronged, and that he was trying to make it up to me. But it isn't that; it can't be that! It is something much worse than that! . . . Oh, I'm glad I haven't used much of his money! Hardly any—not more than I can give back! It wasn't the money and the house he left me that mattered; what he really left me was just this . . . dishonor, shame . . ."
The doorbell rang, and Alan turned to the door and threw it open. In the dusk the figure of the man outside was not at all recognizable; but as he entered with heavy and deliberate steps, passing Alan without greeting and going straight to Constance, Alan saw by the light in the hall that it was Spearman.
"What's up?" Spearman asked. "They tried to get your father at the office and then me, but neither of us was there. They got me afterwards at the club. They said you'd come over here; but that must have been more than two hours ago."
His gaze went on past her to the drawn hangings of
