From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity.
"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read
the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other
sister--married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an
Italian count.

A revulsion--a sort of sick misgiving took the color out of Rose's
cheeks.

"It isn't any one," she said. "It's nothing like that. It's--it's that
case." Her lips stumbled over the title of it. "It's been decided
against you. Didn't you know?"

For a moment his expression was simply the absence of all expression
whatever. "Good lord!" he murmured. Then, "But how the dickens did you
know anything about it? How did you happen to see it in the paper? How
did you know the title of it?"

"I was in the court the day you argued it," she said unevenly. "And when
I found they printed those things in the paper, I kept watch. And to-day
..."

"Why, you dear child!" he said. And the queer ragged quality of his
voice drew her eyes back to his, so that she saw, wonderingly, that they
were bright with tears. "And you never said a word, and you've been
bothering your dear little head about it all the time. Why, you
darling!"

He sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled her up tight into his