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Rh he had found in her world of those close to her with whom she must always be intimately concerned.

Her mother arose and came beside her. "May it not be better, Constance, that it has happened this way?"

"Better!" Constance cried. She controlled herself.

It was only what Henry had said to her months ago when Alan had left her in the north in the search which had resulted in the finding of Uncle Benny—"Might it not be better for him not to find out?" Henry, who could hazard more accurately than any one else the nature of that strange secret which Alan now must have "found out," had believed it; her mother, who at least had lived longer in the world than she, also believed it. There came before Constance the vision of Alan's defiance and refusal to accept the stigma suggested in her father's recital to him of his relationship to Mr. Corvet. There came to her sight of him as he had tried to keep her from entering Uncle Benny's house when Luke was there, and then her waiting with him through the long hour and his dismissal of her, his abnegation of their friendship. And at that time his disgrace was indefinite; last night had he learned something worse than he had dreaded?

The words of his telegram took for her more terrible significance for the moment. "Have some one who knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize him even if greatly changed meet . . ." Were the broken, incoherent words of the wireless the last that she should hear of him, and of Uncle Benny, after that? "They are sticking to it . . . down there . . . they won't give up . . . sinking . . . they have cleared another