It looked as if the hair business meant more than he would like to suppose.

Naturally bright and quick, young Clifford detected Richard's thoughts, and directly began to wonder if there were not something somewhere which Judge Markham did not understand.
"I mean to find out," he thought, and watching an opportunity, when Ethelyn was comparatively alone, he crossed to her side and said in a low tone, "Excuse me, Mrs.Markham.If in my illusions to Frank Van Buren I touched a subject which has never been discussed between yourself and your husband, I meant no harm, I assure you." Instead of rebuking the impertinent young man, Ethelyn turned very red, and stammered out something about its being of no consequence; and so Harry Clifford held the secret which she had kept so carefully from Richard, and that party in Camden was made the stepping-stone to much of the wretchedness that afterward came to our heroine..