"Slight grounds. I don't think I should have suspected you on such. Was there no other reason?"
"Except that you are a sneak and a cad," rose to Trace's lips. But he did not consider it would be convenient to speak it, and answered with a monosyllable, "None."
"Then —— was it a kind or a good thing of you to go with these suspicions to Miss Brabazon, my master's daughter? Had the doctor been a different man from what he is, you might have utterly ruined me. A charge of this nature cannot be refuted, in most cases, as easily as it is made."
"Have you refuted this one?" asked Trace, turning full upon him.
"Yes; at once and entirely. I did not know until to-day that it stood against me."
"Then I must tender you my apologies," returned Trace. Not that there was the least sign of apology in his tone; rather, it seemed to have borrowed the haughty ring of his cousin's, Bertie Loftus. "There was no harm done, it appears, so don't let us have a fuss raised now."
"I am not one to raise a fuss. You cannot but be conscious that to you, Trace, I have been especially tolerant—some might say forbearing. I fear it has been lost upon you."
"You have been very kind, no doubt," cynically returned Trace. "I do not wish more tolerance or forbearance shown to me than others get. Neither am I conscious of having received more."
"No? Yet I have been keeping some of your secrets, Trace. Suppose I had betrayed you in the matter of Paradyne's essay?"
"Of Paradyne's essay?" echoed Trace, seizing the whip and flicking the ear of one of the pretty ponies. "I don't think you know what you are talking of."