"And sure to marry."

"Marry!" repeated Pendleton, with grim irony. "Would YOU marry
her?"

"That's another question," said the young man, promptly, "and one
of individual taste; but it does not affect my general belief that
she could easily find a husband as good and better."

"Suppose she found one BEFORE the secret is out. Ought he be
told?"

"Certainly."

"And that would imply telling HER?"

"Yes," said Paul, but not so promptly. "And you consider THAT
fulfilling the promise of the Trust--the pledges exchanged with
that woman?" continued Pendleton, with glittering eyes and a return
to his own dominant tone.

"My dear colonel," said Paul, somewhat less positively, but still
smiling, "you have made a romantic, almost impossible compact with
Mrs. Howard that, you yourself are now obliged to admit,
circumstances may prevent your carrying out substantially. You
forget, also, that you have just told me that you have already
broken your pledge--under circumstances, it is true, that do you
honor--and that now your desperate attempts to retrieve it have
failed. Now, I really see nothing wrong in your telling to a