"What kind of trouble was it, Kenneth? I have the best right in the world to know."
Griswold straightened himself in his chair and the work-weariness became a thing of the past. With the fairly evident fact staring him in the face from day to day, it had never occurred to him that his friend and business partner might also be his fellow-prisoner in the house of the witcheries. The sudden convincement stung a little, the all-monopolizing selfishness of the craftsman carrying easily over into the field of sentiment. Yet it was clean friendship for Raymer, no less than for the daughter of desire, that prompted him to say:
"You can't have a right to know anything that will distress you."
"Foolish!" she chided—and this time the epithet had lost its alluring softness. "You may as well tell me. Mr. Raymer had borrowed money at poppa's bank. What was the matter? Did he have to pay it back—all at once?"
There seemed to be no further opening for evasion. "Yes; I think that was the way of it," he answered.
Arguing wholly from the newly made discovery, or postulated discovery, of Raymer's state and standing as an object of Miss Grierson's solicitude, Griswold expected something in the nature of an outburst. What he got was a transfixing glance of the passionate sort, quick with open-eyed admiration.
"And you just tossed your money into the breach as if you had millions of it, and by now you've almost forgotten that you did it!" she exclaimed. "Kenneth, dear, there are times when you are so heavenly good that I can hardly believe it. Are there any more men like you over on your side of the world?"
At another time he might have smiled at the boyish frankness of the question. But it was a better motive than the analyst's that prompted his answer.
"Plenty of them, Margery, girl; too many for the good of the race. You mustn't try to make a hero out of me. Once in a while I get a glimpse of the real Kenneth Griswold—you are giving me one just now—and it's sickening. For a moment I was meanly jealous; jealous of Raymer. It was only the writing part of me, I hope, but——"
He stopped because she had suddenly turned her back on him and was looking out over the lake again. When she spoke, she went back to the business affair.