"How do you know it was Roger Moreland?"
"Oh! Brian recognised him as he went out."
Mark Frettlby hesitated for a few moments, and then busied himself with the papers on his desk, as he replied in a low voice—
"You are right—it was Roger Moreland—he is very hard up, and as he was a friend of poor Whyte's, he asked me to assist him, which I did."
He hated to hear himself telling such a deliberate falsehood, but there was no help for it—Madge must never know the truth so long as he could conceal it.
"Just like you," said Madge, kissing him lightly with filial pride. "The best and kindest of men."
He shivered slightly as he felt her caress, and thought how she would recoil from him did she know all. "After all," says some cynical writer, "the illusions of youth are mostly due to the want of experience." Madge, ignorant in a great measure of the world, cherished her pleasant illusions, though many of them had been destroyed by the trials of the past year, and her father longed to keep her in this frame of mind.
"Now go down to dinner, my dear," he said, leading her to the door. "I will follow soon."
"Don't be long," replied his daughter, "or I shall come up again," and she ran down the stairs, her heart feeling strangely light.
Her father looked after her until she vanished, then heaving a regretful sigh returned to his study, and taking out the scattered papers fastened them together, and endorsed them.