“Oh, he’s just a young fellow, and Curtis is putting him through college. Conrad banks with me, and I’ve noticed his checks sometimes when they come back.”

“How good he is to them! It must have been very hard on him,” Lucy’s tone was sympathetic, but her father replied briskly:

“Oh, I don’t know! Responsibility is sometimes just the thing to bring out all the good there is in a young fellow and show what sort of stuff he’s made of.”

“I suppose that’s why he’s never married,” Lucy went on, following her own line of thought, her voice still sounding the sympathetic note, “because he had to take care of the others.”

“I don’t suppose that’s a fault in your eyes, my dear.”

“Of course not, daddy!” Lucy flashed back, smiling and dimpling. “Of course a girl likes a young man better because he’s more interesting and can pay her more attention. You would yourself, daddy, if you were a girl.”

“Very likely, my dear. But I like Curtis Conrad well enough, even if I’m not as young as you are and of your sex. I was [Pg 36]disappointed in him to-day, though, and surprised as well. You must have heard what he said; how did it strike you to hear a young man boast of his intention to commit murder?”

[Pg 36]

He spoke so earnestly and the persuasive quality in his voice was so insistent that Lucy turned upon him a quick look of surprise and question. Then her eyes fell as a sudden rush of emotion, coming she knew not whence or why, almost choked her utterance.

“I don’t know,” she began tremulously, “perhaps he wouldn’t really do it—I don’t believe he would—he seems too good and kind to be really wicked or cruel.” She stopped a moment, only to break out abruptly:

“And it was such a wicked thing that man Delafield did! Oh, he must have been a villain! As wicked and cruel—oh, as bad as he could be! I can’t blame Mr. Conrad for feeling as he does. I know it seems an awful thing for me to say, but I really can’t blame him, daddy, when I think what that man made him suffer—and he was only one; there must have been many others. I might even feel the same way if I were in his place and it had been you that was killed!” There [Pg 37]was a thrill in her voice that seemed in her father’s ears to be the echo of that which had vibrated through Curtis Conrad’s words when he so passionately declared his 

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