"He couldn't. His orders kept him in New York, and he wanted me to come. But I wouldn't. I made him ask his mother. I could spare him for three weeks,—he will be mine for the rest of his life—and he is to tell her before they get here."
"I wouldn't have had it happen for a thousand dollars," said troubled Bob Flippin. "I've always done everything on the square with the Judge."
"I know," said Mary, with the sudden realization of how her act had affected others, "I know. That's the only thing I am sorry about. But—I don't believe the Judge would be so silly as to let anything I did make any difference about you——"
"Where are you going to live?"
For the first time Mary's air of assurance left her. "He is hoping his grandfather will want us at Huntersfield——"
"He can keep on a-hoping," said Bob Flippin. "I know the Judge."
Mary flared. "We can find a little house of our own——"
Her father laid his hand on her shoulder. "Look at me, daughter," he said, and turned her face up to him. "Our house is yours, Mary," he said. "I don't like the way you did it, and I hate to think what will happen when the Judge finds out. But our home is yours, and it's your husband's. As long as you like to stay——"
And now Mary sobbed—a little slip of a thing in her father's arms. All the long months she had kept her secret, holding it safe in her heart, dreading yet longing for the moment when she could tell the world that she was the wife of Truxton Beaufort, whom she had adored from babyhood.