“Mr. Orange!”

“You know it, and I mean it.”

She smiled at him and shrugged her shoulders.

“Do you think I would ever take the commonplace course?” she said proudly. “I did hope that you could appreciate motives for which the world at large is slow enough to give credit. Beauclerk is weak, attractive, and in perplexity; I search my heart again and again, and I find nothing but friendship there—for him. I am careful of every word I speak, and every look, and every thought. My interest is unselfish. But,” she added, “what can any of us do, after all, toward raising either dead bodies or dead souls?”

“Dead souls?”

“Yes. Beauclerk might have been something once; he is still very clever; he will soon be a man for occasional addresses. I believe in him, you see.”

“I know that.”

She was smiling, yet almost in tears, and her voice trembled. He wished to speak, if only to break the sudden, oppressive silence which followed her last words; but neither of them could find a thought to offer. They sat facing each other, lost in following out unutterable conjectures, fancies, and doubts, each painfully aware of a certain mystery, each filled with a sure premonition of troubles to come.

“I could almost pray,” she exclaimed at last, “that you didn't trust him. Because—in spite of himself—he must disappoint every one. He is not a deliberate traitor—but a born one.”

As Sara spoke the double doors were thrown open.