Page:Left to Themselves (1891).djvu/192

 which had so brought them together, came back to him, as it often had.

"Philip," he asked, languidly, "do you remember what you said that night at the hotel about some day being able to prove that—that your father wasn't what—he was believed to be?"

"And didn't do what it was decided by the most of people that he did?" answered Touchtone, in the peculiar sort of tone that always came with any reference to or even thought of his life's disgrace and of his life's hope. "Certainly. What of it?"

"What did you mean by our being able to prove it together?"

"I meant that I'm in a hurry to grow up to be a man able to take care of myself. When I can turn over—well, two or three stones that haven't been touched, I think I'll find my father's good name, all right, under one of them."

He paused a moment. Belmont's taunt came into his head. Ah! he had a new link, possibly, if he met him again—alone. "And by the time I can start into this job you, may be, can lend a hand at it too. That's all."