Page:The council of seven.djvu/55

 the throat. As his eye caught hers and held it, she drew her breath quickly in.

"Since you ask me." The tone was sweet apology, "Only my poor opinion. Really, I don't pretend to know. Why should one?"

"You think," said Helen, "that he  might?"

"My dear, I think nothing," It was the father speaking again. "One can't help feeling he's a rather high explosive, that's all. And of course, the mother"

"The mother!" Her breath came and went in a little gasp.

Watching her closely he saw her turn very white. "I beg your pardon!" He was very quick, very adroit. "But you pin me down. And you mean so much to one, you know. In the Office we have come quite to depend on you. I can't help thinking of you almost as a girl of my own."

The simple words sank deep. They were music. This man had always had her loyal admiration. And now, as she sat facing him, she began to feel awed by a sense of all that he had done for her.

Suddenly a picture was flashed before her mind. Far away in America, in a backwater of a southern state, she saw her old parents hard pressed by modern conditions, but whose lot for nearly two years now she had been able to lighten with a liberal slice from her salary. It was going to be a terrible wrench to give