Trevlyn recognized and appreciated her noble generosity in suffering him to go free, for in the one look she had given him on that disgraceful occasion, he had felt that she recognized him. But she pitied him enough to let him go free.
Well, he would show her that her confidence was not misplaced. He would deserve her forbearance. He was resolved upon a new life.
He left the saloon, and after many rebuffs succeeded in getting employment as errand-boy in a large importing house. The salary was a mere pittance, but it kept him in clothes and coarse food, until one day, about a year after his apprenticeship there, he chanced to save the life of Mr. Belgrade, the senior partner. A gas-pipe in the private office of the firm exploded, and the place took fire, and Mr. Belgrade, smothered and helpless, would have perished in the flames, had not Arch, with a bravery few would have expected in a bashful, retiring boy, plunged through the smoke and flame, and borne him to a place of safety.
Mr. Belgrade was a man with a conscience, and, grateful for his life, he rewarded his preserver by a clerkship of importance. The duties of this office he discharged faithfully for three years, when the death of the head clerk left a vacancy, and when Arch was nineteen he received the situation.
Through these three years he had been a close student. Far into the night he pored over his books, and, too proud to go to school, he hired a teacher and was taught privately. At twenty he was quite as well educated as nine-tenths of the young men now turned out by our fashionable colleges.
Rumors of Margie Harrison's triumphs reached him constantly, for Margie was a belle and a beauty now. Her parents were dead, and she had been left to the guardianship of Mr. Trevlyn, at whose house she made her home, and where she reigned a very queen. Old Trevlyn's heart at last found something beside his diamonds to worship, and Margie had it all her own way.
She came into the store of Belgrade and Co. one day, and asked to look at some laces. Trevlyn was the only clerk disengaged, and with a very changeable face he came forward to attend to her. He felt that she would recognize him at once—that she would remember where she had seen him the last time—a house-breaker! She held his reputation in her keeping.
His hand trembled as he took down the laces—she glanced at his face. A start of surprise—a conscious, painful blush swept over her face. He dropped the box, and the rich laces fell over her feet.
"Pardon me," he said hurriedly, and, stooping to pick them up, the little glove he had stolen on that night, and which he wore always in his bosom, fell out, and dropped among the laces.
She picked it up with a little cry.