"_Fourth_ to you, then," and Mrs. Reeves nodded to Jessie, who replied:
"I don't care if they were _first_. Everybody knows me, and my position in society does not depend upon what my family have been before me, but upon what I am myself. Isn't it so, father?" and she turned to Mr. Graham, who had just entered the room.
"I don't know the nature of your conversation," he replied, "but I overheard your last remarks, and fully concur with you, that persons are to be respected for themselves and not for their family; neither are they to be despised for what their family or any member of it may do."
There was a tremor in his voice, and looking at him closely, Jessie saw that he was very pale, and evidently much agitated.
"What is it, father?" she cried, forgetting the _three Thayers_ and thinking only of Walter. "What has happened?"
Mr. Graham did not reply to her, but turning to Mrs. Reeves, he said:
"Excuse me, madam, but I think your duty calls you home, where poor Charlotte needs your sympathy."
"Why _poor_ Charlotte?" replied Jessie, grasping his arm. "Is William sick or dead?"
"He has been arrested for forgery. I may as well tell it first as last," and the words dropped slowly from Mr. Graham's lips.
"_Forgery!_ William arrested! It's false!" shrieked Mrs. Reeves, and the salts which Mrs. Bartow had used so vigorously a little time before changed hands, while Jessie passed her arm around the lady to keep her from falling to the floor. "It's false. He never forged. Why should he? Isn't he rich, and a Bellenger?" she kept repeating, until at last Mr. Graham answered:
"It is too true, my dear madam, that for some time past Mr. Bellenger has been engaged in a systematic course of forging, managing always to escape detection, until now, it has been clearly proved against him, and he is in the hands of the law."
There was no reason why Mrs. Reeves, at this point, should think of Walter, but she did, and fancying that her auditors might possibly be drawing comparisons between the two cousins she said:
"It's the _Marshall_ blood with which he is tainted."
"Marshall blood!" repeated Jessie, indignantly. "I'd like to know by what chemical process you have mingled the Marshall blood with William Bellenger's."