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Rh longer than he could easily remember. It had begun—before ever he himself had been responsible for the girl—in those long, sometimes unhappy talks about her with old Matthew Regan, who was so apt and capable in all business matters, so bewildered and incompetent in dealing with his daughter. He had grown then to share the old man's anxiety over her, and, ever since, she had been for him a woman apart from all other women. He knew now why none other had ever interested him. Plainly too he saw—now half in mockery at himself—how his own position as her trustee and her difference from the women to whom he was accustomed had disguised his feelings toward her from himself.

Hereford smiled again that queer uneven smile, as he took from its envelope the