Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/335

304 night; its custodian home in the bosom of his family. Only its lower ramparts were left for the feet of romantic youth to tread.

Along these ramparts, close to the shimmering sea, Miss Meyrick and Minot walked. Truth to tell, it was not so very difficult to keep one's footing—but once the girl was forced to hold out an appealing hand.

"French heels are treacherous," she explained.

Minot took her hand, and for the first time knew the thrill that, encountered often on the printed page, he had mentally classed as "rubbish!" Wisely she interrupted it:

"You said you had news?"

He had, but it was not so easy to impart as he had expected.

"Tell me," he said, "if it should turn out that what poor old George said this morning was a fact—that Allan Harrowby was an impostor—would you feel so very badly?"

She withdrew her hand.

"You have no right to ask that," she replied.

"Forgive me. Indeed I haven't. But I was moved to ask it for the reason that—what George