Front matter (continued 3)

She had a word with him at a suitable interval after their late conversation. "She's coming."

"Good!" he cried triumphantly. "Did Howard go?"

"No. Miss Finch was going to see her, anyway. She'll be here at three."

"Good!" said Forbes again. He turned to her with that mingled gentleness and resolution which somehow revealed him in a new light.

"Now, my dear friend, I'm going to ask a favor of you. Promise me you won't misunderstand."

"I'll try not," she said faintly, and her heart misgave her.

"Promise me that you'll leave us to ourselves when we have our little talk. I know your interest in Hephzibah's future—"

In her relief Agatha became jocular. "No, you don't know. You can't. Her welfare means as much to me as my own."

"I'm not doubting that. Please don't misunderstand me. But sometimes I think these sensitive natures can open up better to a stranger than to a friend. And the fact that I'm blind may be a help to her."

"Yes," agreed Agatha with unmistakable sincerity, "I'm pretty sure it will be."

"There's something mysterious about that girl," Forbes continued. "The way she refuses to listen to propositions that are all clearly for her good, puzzles me. I'm convinced that if I can have her to myself an hour or so, I'll get at the root of the trouble. Anyway it's worth trying."

Relieved from the terrifying certainty that he was about to ask her to chaperon them during the interview, Agatha had almost ceased to dread the prospective ordeal. But prudence suggested the advisability of seeming a little hurt. "I shouldn't have interfered in any way," she assured him plaintively. "Since you've set your heart on talking to Hephzibah, I should have sat quietly in the background and not said a word."

"Better not," Forbes interposed hastily. "Let me have my way this time. And when we talk it over afterward, I'll tell you every word that was said as nearly as I can remember."

CHAPTER XII

HEPHZIBAH TURNS THE TABLES

Hephzibah Diggs was prompt. As the grandfather's clock in the hall struck three, Agatha advanced to the French window opening on the porch, and said in her natural voice, "She's here, Mr. Forbes."

Forbes smiled approval. "Send her around, please, Miss Kent." His manner suggested that the difficulties in the way of his philanthropic plan were now a thing of the past.

The clumping footsteps that presently announced the approach of his visitor took him back a trifle. There was no particular reason why Hephzibah should not be an ordinary clumsy country girl, in heavy shoes that clattered noisily as she moved, but somehow he had not expected it. He rose and stood awaiting her.

The voice was more unexpected than her heavy tread. It made him wince. He remembered that Warren likened it to the melodious notes of a guinea fowl and he appreciated the aptness of the comparison. There was no reason why Hephzibah Diggs should not talk through her nose, and in a harsh, strident, generally unpleasant tone. But the fact that she did so, though he had been abundantly forewarned, took him by surprise.

"Miss Kent says you've got something to say to me."

Thus Hephzibah announced her presence. And Forbes, hastily summoning a smile, and resolutely excluding his pain from his voice, extended a cordial hand.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Miss Hephzibah. Won't you sit down? I think there's a chair near."

"I'll wait on myself, don't you bother none." A grating noise indicated that a chair was being dragged across the floor of the porch into convenient nearness to his own. A plumping sound gave evidence that Hephzibah had seated herself.

The picture in the rustic chair deserved a more appreciative audience than a blind man. Hephzibah wore a costume best described as a medley, since garments originally the property of Miss Finch and Howard, as well as her own, contributed to the startling effect. A pair of Howard's outgrown shoes accounted for her clumsy tread. She wore a little bonnet which Miss Finch had discarded after some dozen years of service, and which seemed genuinely scandalized at finding itself atop Agatha's brazenly assertive mass of hair. A very short calico skirt, also the property of Miss Finch, and a sky-blue silk waist, evidently designed for festive wear, completed the grotesque costume. Just why it should have given Agatha confidence in playing her rôle, she knew as little as any one.

Forbes commented pleasantly on the weather as some such preliminary skirmishing seemed necessary before coming to the point. He had resolved on establishing a friendly understanding between Hephzibah and himself, before making the offer which, he realized, might readily arouse the suspicion of a girl who knew by bitter experience that men are not always to be trusted. He was inclined to suspect Warren of lacking tact, startling her by his failure to employ finesse. He did not take himself into his own confidence fully enough to admit that he was also sparring for time in the effort to recover his poise. It was singular that he had received so different an impression of Hephzibah in the brief, bewildering interview which had opened by his clasping her in his arms, and ended by her refusal to tell her name. He had to remind himself that on the springy turf her clumsy tread would be soundless, and that the gasping whisper in which she spoke gave him no clue as to the quality of her voice. Still, if Warren's letter had not expressly assured him that Hephzibah was his mysterious rescuer, he would have felt sure that he had been mistaken.

Hephzibah was in full accord with his favorable opinion of the weather. She expressed her agreement so heartily that he winced again, and conquered an impulse to tell her that it was unnecessary to speak so loud.

"I suppose," he began, deciding that after all it would be better to waive further introductory remarks, "that you must have wondered why I wanted to see you."

"I didn't bother about that none," replied Hephzibah. "I've had a lot to do with sick folks, and I know they're likely to take 'most any sort of notion into their heads."

Forbes reddened smartly. He felt as if he had been slapped. Clearly tact was not in Hephzibah's line.

"I've heard a good deal about you, first and last," he assured her pleasantly. "And of course my interest in you was increased by what happened near Indian Rock the other afternoon. I'm not going to talk about that for I know you would rather I wouldn't."

"Oh, don't mind me," Hephzibah returned comfortably. "You can say anything you like. You can't make me mad."

Forbes hesitated. There is no doubt that on the moment he acquitted Miss Kent of a certain charge to which she had been given no chance to plead guilty. He realized that women sometimes understood one another better than a mere man might hope to do. But he had put his hand to the plow with the intention of proving Warren's unfitness in matters requiring diplomacy, and he had no intention of turning back.

Deliberately and with carefully chosen words, Forbes explained to Hephzibah the plan he had evolved for her regeneration. He went more into detail than Warren had done. He traced her future years from the present modest start, up to the time when she should bear the stamp of culture, and be able to hold her own in the best society. The picture that he drew seemed to him an attractive one. He showed himself not altogether lacking in a knowledge of the opposite sex, by the emphasis he placed upon the friend of Warren's to whom had been assigned the responsibility of selecting a suitable wardrobe for Hephzibah.

He did not pause till he was pleasantly confident that he had done the subject justice. He turned his sightless eyes upon her expectantly. Hephzibah said nothing. There was a chilling quality in her protracted silence.

"Well?" questioned Forbes, and though he had been so favorably impressed by his putting of the case, he spoke a little anxiously. "What do you think of it all?"

Hephzibah laughed unmusically.

"Well, I let you go on, just so's to get it off your chest. There ain't nothing to it, not so far as I can see. The clothes would be nice enough, but if I had to study all the time and have some dame bossing me my days off and all, I'd pay for 'em dear."

"But wouldn't you like to be educated?"

"Laws, no. I never hankered to be a school-teacher. I'd rather cook any day in the week."

By this time Forbes was convinced that Miss Kent was right. Something was lacking in Hephzibah. He realized that he himself had been influenced more than he knew by Warren's extravagance, and Warren, it was apparent, had been swept off his feet by the girl's fresh beauty. Just how to explain the impression he himself had formed of her that day when she swung her lithe body between him and mortal peril, Forbes did not know. She had said little, and that with difficulty, because of her breathless condition, and yet the impression he had formed of her was infinitely removed from the truth. He felt now that he had made a mistake, and that Hephzibah was not of the fiber to take on polish readily. He would show his gratitude in some more appropriate way than by attempting her education. But since he had blundered into this rather absurd situation, there was nothing left but to go through with it.

"You do not have to use your education in teaching school, unless you wish to," he explained patiently. "But it will fit you for a better social position." He realized that this was over her head and kindly simplified it. "I mean that the more you learn, the nicer friends you will have and the more things you will find to interest you."

"I know enough now," Hephzibah insisted calmly, "for anybody that ain't a teacher. When I went to district school I learned to read and write and figure, and I 'most always stood up till near the last when we had spelling matches. Oh, I've got an education all right."

"Possibly, my child, it would be better to rely on the judgment of some one else." His manner was patiently paternal.

Hephzibah Diggs shuffled her feet noisily. "I guess I know enough to 'tend to my own affairs," she said, her tone truculent.

"I'm not so sure about that, Hephzibah. I think you would do much better to take advice."

"How'd you like it yourself if folks you didn't know came butting in, telling you how to manage your business?"

"If it was meant kindly, I should be grateful."

"Oh, very well." He could hear that she was breathing hard. "Then I'll tell you that for a sensible man you're making as big a botch of your affairs as anybody I ever knew of."

Forbes was unfeignedly astonished. "Why, Hephzibah, you don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I, though. I know about that girl of yours, and what a fool she's making of you."

Forbes caught his breath. Then he realized that it was beneath his dignity to be angry. "I think it is hardly necessary," he said stiffly, "to discuss that subject, Hephzibah."

"Oh, no! you can stick your finger into my pie all you want to. You can tell me I ought to go to some place I never heard of, with somebody I never knew, and do everything I hate for years and years, but when I say one thing about your girl, it's hardly necessary to discuss that subject."

The last words were given with what he realized was an excellent imitation of his own air of dignified aloofness. This amused him and had the additional effect of mollifying his irritation. "But I am interfering in your affairs, because I have your interests at heart," he said very kindly.

"Same here. I hate like the mischief to see a nice gentleman made a fool of by a vain, silly girl with about as much brains as a cockroach, and as much heart as a pancake."

This description of Julia, though he would have indignantly denied that it had the remotest resemblance to truth, roused him to the realization that this uncouth young woman knew more of his personal affairs than she had any right to know.

"Hephzibah," he said sternly, "I don't understand where you could have secured information about any friends of mine. Surely Miss Kent—"

For all her faults, Hephzibah was capable of magnanimity. On one critical occasion Miss Kent had sacrificed Hephzibah's reputation to save herself, and Hephzibah was under no obligation to spare hers. Yet without hesitation she threw herself into the breach. "I listened," she explained quickly.

"You mean when Miss Kent was reading me my letters?" His flushed face told that he was not disposed to belittle her eavesdropping.

"Yes, and when you talked things over. I heard enough to know that you'd better use the brains the Lord gave you to manage your own affairs. Why don't you put it up to that girl of yours that she can take you or leave you?"

"Really, Hephzibah—"

"Oh, it's all right for you to come along and pry into my business, and tell me what I'm to do. But when I turn the tables you squirm. Funny what a difference it makes whose foot the shoe's on."

Forbes subsided. Under his feeling of bewilderment was a vague suspicion that perhaps there was something in Hephzibah's point of view.

"In the first place," continued this intrepid young woman, "she showed she was no good when she throwed you down like she did. She was going to marry you, wasn't she? And if she cared enough about you for that, it was up to her to stand by you when trouble came. Pretty kind of wife she'd have made if she turned her back the minute hard luck struck you."

Forbes remembered vaguely that Miss Kent had once said something similar. He wondered that two human beings so unlike should have the same view-point.

"You got off easy," Hephzibah continued. "You might have married her. When she showed herself up for what she was, you'd ought to have got down on your marrow-bones and thanked the Lord. But look at you! Instead, you keep on telling her how much you love her and that a yellow streak don't matter—in a woman."

Forbes suddenly realized that he could endure no more. He could not listen longer to these preposterous statements. But underneath his panic of anger, something whispered that he shrank from listening longer to Hephzibah's frantic speech, not because she was uttering slanders against Julia, but because what she said was true.

He struck the arm of his chair with his clenched fist. "Stop!" he said in a voice unlike his own. "I won't listen."

"All right," said Hephzibah Diggs. "But what's sauce for the goose—"

She stopped, starting to her feet. The blow from Forbes' fist had loosened the arm of the chair in which he sat. It had bounced out of place and then slipped back again, catching his finger as it returned to base. It was his sudden startling pallor that checked Hephzibah's fluency.

"Can you help me a little—Hephzibah?" Forbes' voice was faint, his lips blue. "My hand—seems caught."

Hephzibah's clattering haste was too late to save him from ignominious faintness. He had not been well since his trip to the city, and the shock of the pain was too much for his nerves. She caught the arm of the chair and wrenched it savagely away, just as his head fell over against her shoulder. She released the imprisoned hand, and slipping her arm about him kept his limp body from sliding to the floor. Upon his white face, she saw, conscience-stricken, there seemed to rest an expression of piteous bewilderment.

Forbes reviving found himself indoors. He was stretched on the couch in the living-room. The odor of camphor was much in evidence and his hair felt damp, as if he had been taking a dip in the surf. Some one was chafing his hand. "Hephzibah," he said faintly.

The voice of Miss Kent answered him, speaking in a muffled fashion, as if she had a cold in her head.

"She's gone. That horrible girl is gone. She shall never come near you again."

Even after his late experience the adjective seemed to indicate prejudice. But he did not press the point, as there was another matter he wished cleared up.

"Did I frighten you terribly?"

"Yes—I was frightened." Her voice shook as if she wanted to cry again. "You're not so strong as I thought. I shall have to take better care of you. I blame myself—terribly."

This was unreasonable, but he did not stop to argue the case. "Was that why you kissed me?" he asked. "I didn't seem to come to all at once; consciousness came in waves and receded, you know, and once I felt sure some one kissed my cheek, and a big tear splashed down—"

Miss Kent spoke hastily. "Oh, that was only part of your dreaming. Fainting people often have such fancies."

"Very likely," Forbes agreed. "You see, I don't know much about fainting. It never happened to me but once before." He turned his head on his damp pillow and lapsed into silence. It was the part of discretion, perhaps, to leave Miss Kent under the impression that the kiss was an illusion, due to his semi-conscious state, but he knew better. It was as real as music, or flame, or electricity. It had certain characteristics of all three.

It must have been Hephzibah.

CHAPTER XIII

CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER

Murray Prendergast had proposed. The summer sport had become dead earnest. Julia wrote Forbes the full details, explaining that the young man was awaiting her answer, and that she had asked two weeks in which to come to a decision. Apparently Julia, like Miss Finch, felt that to refuse Prendergast would be flying in the face of Providence, even though accepting him seemed a harsh necessity.

"'It's not what you and I dreamed of in the dear old days,'" wrote Julia. "'Oh, Burton, how far away those happy times seem when we sat hand in hand and planned our future. How merciless life is, Burton! Is there some dark fate in whose hands we are only puppets?'"

Agatha broke off in her reading to lift a scarlet face. "Must I go on with this?"

"Do you mean that you're tired?" Forbes' voice was self-controlled but in his pale cheeks a pulse beat like a trip hammer. Even his tears would not have hurt her like that palpitating spot over which his will was powerless.

"Yes, I am tired. I'm terribly tired of the people who talk about fate when it's all their own cowardice, and pity themselves for losing what they deliberately threw away."

"It's a matter of view-point," said Forbes tonelessly. "If that's all, I'm afraid I must ask you to go on. I—I could hardly have Howard read it." All at once his white cheek showed a stain of red, as if the mere thought that any eyes but his own should see that letter was humiliating beyond endurance.

Julia's letter was as long as usual and decidedly more sentimental. She surrendered herself with abandon to the luxury of heart-break. She recalled a number of tender episodes, and wondered pathetically why fate could not have spared lovers so fond. To Agatha, Julia's melancholy was a theatrical make-believe on the face of it, as much a pose as her pretense of affection. Agatha did her best to spoil the effect of the letter by reading rapidly, and in a monotonous sing-song, but she could not keep her eyes from the face of the man before her, and she saw that every tender memory the missive evoked found response in his tortured heart.

She wound up breathless and hot and trembling uncontrollably. Forbes thanked her with a formal courtesy that added to her pain, for it seemed to set her at a distance. She wanted to put her arms about him, and cry over him, and tell him that the hurt would not last. Then she remembered with bitterness that she was a withered old woman in whose heart the fires of love had burned to ashes, long, long before, if indeed they had ever been kindled.

"I'd like a sheet of paper, please," Forbes said with the same laborious politeness. "I'll scrawl a line myself."

"What are you going to tell her?"

His air of surprise at the question indicated that there was but one answer. "What is there to say, except to wish her all happiness?"

"You're not going to blame her, then?"

"God forbid." He took the sheet she gave him, wrote upon it rapidly and folding it across, handed it back to her. "I'll have to ask you to direct the envelope for me," he said, still heart-breakingly patient. "I can write well enough for Julia's eyes, but not for Uncle Sam's."

Agatha did not reply. The breeze, always fresh upon the porch, had parted the folded sheet, and her reluctant gaze caught the signature, "Always yours, B.F." She turned away her eyes and caught her breath. "Always yours." That was the cruelty of it. Julia would marry Murray Prendergast and yet keep her hold on the heart of the man she had abandoned in his need. Her selfishness could not alter his loyalty. If the letter just read did not reveal her to him in her incomparable egotism, nothing ever would.

Agatha's heart bled for him in his white resignation. If he had done anything but sit there like a man under sentence of death, she would have felt equal to the occasion. But this white suffering terrified her. She dared not trust herself to look at him, for her eyes ran over at the sight of his drawn face. She stared out over the serene landscape as she said unsteadily, "Did you ask her to wait?"

"Wait? Why wait?"

"For you to get well, of course. If she's so fond of you, she ought to be able to wait a year or two until you've recovered your sight."

He shrugged his shoulders without replying, but the gesture revealed more than hopelessness, something alarmingly akin to indifference. And though Agatha knew that in the nature of the case, this mood could not last, it added fuel to her hatred of the shallow, selfish woman who was responsible. In her serener moments Agatha comforted herself by the reflection that however unhappy Forbes might be without Julia, he was bound to be more unhappy with her. But in the present crisis that consolation failed her. She was swayed by the desire to give him, at all costs, the thing he wanted.

Her plan was formed in an instant. Agatha was aware that with many women as with all men, undisputed possession tends to indifference. Forbes' one chance with Julia, she implicitly believed, was to awaken in the mind of that complacent young woman a doubt as to whether her unfortunate lover was in reality hers always, as he declared himself. Forbes, who scorned to ask even for a few months' delay, could not be expected to lend himself to the scheme unfolding in Agatha's fancy. Some friend must do for him what he would not stoop to do for himself.

As Agatha walked to the writing-desk, holding the folded sheet pinched shut with thumb and finger, for fear of again reading the assurance of Forbes' unalterable devotion, there was something oddly gallant in her bearing. Her keen common sense was temporarily quiescent. Her heart had things all its own way. Since the prospect of losing Julia irrevocably had graven that terrible look upon Forbes' face, she must find some way of making Julia hesitate to engage herself to Prendergast There was but one chance, as far as Agatha could see. She resolved to take it.

No one could consider it singular, Agatha decided, as she seated herself, if an amiable old lady should send a note of congratulation to the girl to whom she had penned so many communications. Agatha almost snatched the stationery from the drawer. She had a most unnatural fear of losing her courage by delay. At the moment she lacked neither courage nor inspiration.

"My Dear Miss Studley:

"I'm sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your grandmother."

Agatha paused, bit her pen and frowned. "I am, of course," she told herself, with that odd impression of dual identity, which at times made it difficult for her to remember whether she was nineteen or sixty-seven. "But it isn't worth while to make her feel so youthful." She reached for a fresh sheet of paper and made a new start.

"My Dear Miss Studley:

"I am sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your mother, who has come to feel right well acquainted with you through Mr. Forbes, and through reading your letters aloud to him. I want to be one of the first to congratulate you, and to wish you all the happiness you deserve."

Her pen poised in air, Agatha combated the temptation to underline the last two words. "It's exactly what I do wish her," she mused. "All the happiness she deserves, not a bit more nor a bit less. Poor wretch, it's an inhuman sort of wish but I can't help it, and I'm afraid she won't realize that I'm consigning her to Purgatory."

The pen resumed its hurried scratching. It was not necessary for Agatha to wait for inspiration. Words came in a flood.

"Some people might blame you for your engagement, so soon after breaking with Mr. Forbes, but I assure you I do not feel that way. I am unmarried myself, and I know that when a woman loses one chance, she may never get another. Mr. Forbes might die or change his mind. I think you are very sensible to make sure of Mr. Prendergast while he is in the mood. Whatever ill-natured people may say about you, I for one will always take this view."

Agatha drew a long breath of pure satisfaction. She had undertaken the letter with the sole thought of rushing to Forbes' assistance in his extremity. But virtue was proving its own reward. She was enjoying herself immensely. Her sense of satisfaction made her reckless. When again the pen began moving down the sheet, it wrote more than Agatha had originally intended.

"I suppose you sometimes feel a little anxious about Mr. Forbes and his future. It is hard for us women to get rid of a feeling of responsibility for the men who love us. And I am glad I can set your natural misgivings at rest. It would not be a great surprise to me if you should hear of another engagement in the near future. Yet Mr. Forbes is a very honorable gentleman, I need not assure you, and as long as you were unmarried, or at least not engaged, he would not have permitted himself to become entangled with any other woman. But this summer he has spent a great deal of time with a girl who lives in the neighborhood. She is considered extremely pretty and though that does not mean anything to him at present, it is evident that he finds her company most enjoyable. Indeed I believe he is more interested in her than he himself realizes, while the fact that she has devoted practically her entire summer to him, seems to indicate that it would not be difficult to bring her to think of him as something more than a friend. And I've noticed that she seems quite responsive when he pats her hand or holds it, as he has a way of doing. I suppose he feels that an invalid has a right to some little privileges. On one occasion he did so far forget himself as to take her in his arms, but the circumstances were quite unusual, and I saw to it that the indiscretion was never repeated. I always manage to be around when the young people are together, for, as our beloved Longfellow expresses it, 'Man is fire and woman is tow.'

"I'm afraid I am a poor one to talk about discretion when I am writing you all this. I'm sure if Mr. Forbes knew he would be very much put out with me, and so I am going to ask you not to speak of this if you should happen to write again. Very likely Mr. Prendergast will not approve of your corresponding with an old flame, and who can blame him, for as Will Carlton says so ably, 'She that is false to one can be the same with two,' or words to that effect. I'm afraid my memory is not what it once was.

"Excuse this garrulous letter. How I have run on about Mr. Forbes instead of merely carrying out my first intention, and wishing you the future you so richly deserve.

"Very truly yours, "Agatha Kent."

Agatha re-read the closely written sheets with growing delectation. In every respect they measured up to her anticipations. She had expressed her sentiments toward Julia with a plainness she would hardly have believed possible in a letter superficially observing the amenities of civilized life. She had planted some barbed suggestions where she flattered herself they would render the reader most uncomfortable. But that was not all. It is a thoroughly human weakness to wish to eat one's cake and have it too, and Agatha suspected Julia of having more than her share of this familiar characteristic. Julia, so Agatha argued, saw herself the irreproachable wife of a wealthy man, enjoying all the dignities incident to the Prendergast social sphere, and at the same time the object of another man's hopeless adoration. The doubt Agatha's letter suggested, that she could continue without a rival to rule in Forbes' affections, was, in Agatha's opinion, Forbes' one chance to keep her from the decisive step.

Agatha enclosed Forbes' brief communication with her own lengthy one and despatched it by Howard before qualms could assail her as to the advisability of dropping this particular bomb into the enemy's camp. She knew vaguely that a host of suggestions stood marshaled at the back of her brain, ready to demonstrate conclusively her lack of wisdom. If Julia did not choose to consider the letter confidential, trouble would ensue. The fact that Agatha saw all Forbes' letters, and that he knew only what she chose to tell him, gave her but slight advantage, since she confessed to scruples in the matter of other people's letters. And if it had the result she believed possible, and Julia refused to engage herself to Prendergast till Forbes' recovery was certain or proved impossible, Agatha could not congratulate herself on having assured her friend's happiness.

"I'm afraid I'm a good deal like a mother who gives the baby the scissors to play with because he cries for them. Only with a baby you can distract its attention, and make it think that something else is just as good, and with Burton Forbes that wouldn't work."

And then having satisfied herself by peering through the window that Forbes' face still wore the dazed look of a creature incomprehensibly wounded, Agatha threw herself upon the couch and sought the relief of tears. She wept as she did everything else. Hot tears rained down upon the pillow. Sobs shook her. Every now and then mirth got the upper hand and she laughed hysterically, interrupting, though briefly, the Niobe-like activities.

The storm was over as suddenly as it had begun. Agatha rose and regarded her swollen features in the mirror with much disfavor.

"I suppose it's no use to put powder on my nose. It would only look like a strawberry sprinkled with sugar. And anyway, Mr. Forbes can't see what a fright I am."

As if that thought had a miraculously sustaining power, Agatha drew a long breath and passed into the kitchen to help Phemie with the dinner.

CHAPTER XIV

CONFIDENCES

Agatha had reached the conclusion that Julia was more venal than vain. A full week she had awaited a sign that her ruse had succeeded. For seven creeping days, dry-lipped and with unsteady pulses, she had scanned the mail for a letter directed in Julia's familiar, hateful hand, and in the beginning she could not have told whether there was more of hope or of apprehension in her expectancy.

But now she knew by the way her heart was singing. Her insane attempt to give Forbes the thing he wanted, whatever the consequences, had gloriously failed. She had played a friend's part, if a fool's part, and had not been punished by success. Naturally Forbes' numerous letters had never made the slightest reference to an attractive young girl, who was devoting her summer to rendering his exile tolerable, and such an omission would have awakened doubt in the least suspicious nature. To Agatha, Julia's continued silence, in the face of such facts, was convincing proof that she had thrown up her hand and was out of the game.

Agatha had fought Forbes' depression stubbornly while the week was young, and then as hope strengthened, with an audacious, irresistible gaiety that occasionally swept him off his feet. Never had it seemed so difficult to simulate age. A score of times a day she found it necessary to strangle a peal of girlish laughter, or tone it down to the subdued quaver appropriate to her years. It was incredibly irksome to subject her buoyant feet to the yoke of decorum. Never had she so courted exposure as now when the lightening of her heart impelled her to all sorts of foolish youthful pranks. Miss Finch watched her in dumb fascinated terror. And Forbes despite his abysmal gloom, found himself responding with astonishing frequency to her whirlwind spirits.

She woke early the morning of the eighth day and lay musing, too pleasurably excited to fall asleep again. Julia was out of the way. She had engaged herself deliberately to another man, and now it was not Julia but a radiant memory against which she must pit her wit and beauty. Had Agatha been older she might have questioned whether this were an occasion for self-congratulation, since the unfading, perfect dream has an undeniable advantage over fading and faulty beauty. But thanks to her inexperience, the removal of Julia from her path left her with a reckless confidence in her star. There was a tangled web to be unraveled, to be sure, before matters were established on a satisfactory footing, but her blithe hopefulness hurdled these grim preliminaries, and busied itself with a future all rose-color.

A sound in the next room roused Agatha from her sanguine self-communion, the plaintive little whine of Miss Finch's creaking rocking chair. Agatha sprang out of bed, and carried her watch to the window. The faint light showed the hour hand still plodding on toward four o'clock, no hour surely for Zaida Finch to be indulging her propensity for rocking chairs.

A white-clad figure, censoriously erect, appeared in Miss Finch's doorway. Miss Finch gasped, jumped, and made a rush for her bed, as if with the hope of persuading her youthful visitor that the sound of footsteps had roused her from peaceful slumbers. Then realizing the futility of evasion, she stopped short, and stood with hanging head, her air of confusion together with her diminutive figure, giving her the appearance of a naughty child.

"Fritz," began Agatha impressively, "why on earth aren't you asleep?" As she came closer her judicial air changed to consternation. Miss Finch's pale little eyes showed red even in the dim light. Her small nose was redder still. Her thin cheeks were wet with tears.

"Fritz, dear," cried the girl, her voice vibrant with tenderness, "are you sick? Does your head ache? Get into bed and let me make you comfortable. Why didn't you call me? I've been awake an age."

This affectionate concern was too much for Miss Finch's self-control. As she climbed into bed, she gave way to loud sobs. Agatha hung over her, distressed and vaguely self-reproachful, because she had not discovered earlier the urgent need of her presence.

"Don't cry, Fritzie! Shall I get you the hot water bottle, or is it the camphor that you need? Where does it hurt?" She patted the little sob-shaken figure with a motherly hand. Even when not impersonating her great-aunt, Agatha frequently felt years older than Zaida Finch.

It took a minute to elicit an answer. It came finally in a little sniffly whisper.

"My head's all right, Agatha."

"Probably that short-cake disagreed with you. I wondered at the time, if two helps weren't too many, with the whipped cream."

"My stomach's all right, too," declared Miss Finch, a trifle pettishly.

"Then where's the pain?"

Miss Finch deliberated. Her tears gushed afresh. "I—guess it's in my heart. I'm worried, Agatha."

Agatha sat down on the side of the bed, and sighed remorsefully.

"I know it's been a hard summer for you, Fritz. All this deception is very trying for one of your candid temperament. I should mind it frightfully myself if it wasn't for the fun of the thing. But I adored amateur theatricals when I was in boarding-school, and this is exactly the same, except that you have to make up your part as you go along. I knew that you'd been worrying, but I didn't dream how dreadfully you'd taken it to heart."

Miss Finch opened one swollen eye. She looked rather taken aback.

"I don't deny all this deception has worried me, Agatha. But just now—I was thinking of something else. I'm worried about my own affairs."

For a moment Agatha was nonplused. Miss Finch was one of the people who seem to be without personal "affairs." She had no relatives to die, no money to lose, no friends to disappoint her, no prospects to be overcast. She was painfully immune against loss, by comprehensive lack. Then on Agatha's incredulity flashed the recollection of Deacon Wiggins and James Doolittle. In her absorption with her own concerns she had forgotten that Miss Finch stood at a cross-roads, doubtful which turning to take. "Oh, Fritzie," she cried self-reproachfully, "I hope nothing's gone wrong with your love-affairs."

Miss Finch's grief lost something of its poignancy. Agatha's exclamation seemed to establish her status. It was something to know love's pangs, even though ignorant of its joys. Her husky voice was controlled as she replied, "The trouble is that they haven't gone at all, right or wrong."

"Oh!" Agatha became meditative and Miss Finch's confidences trickled on plaintively, like a sad-hearted brook.

"I got another letter from Deacon Wiggins yesterday. He said he guessed his first must have gone astray since he hadn't heard from me. He went over about the same ground as he did in the first letter and he put in a lot of Scripture. It gives one a feeling that a man can be depended on, when he's got so much of the Bible at his tongue's end."

"Well?" Agatha interrupted hopefully.

"Then I met Mr. Doolittle on the road this afternoon and he looked at me real reproachful, and said he was coming to see me in a day or two. I thought he seemed," faltered Miss Finch in conscience-stricken accents, "kind of thin and pale."

Agatha suppressed a smile. "You're keeping them dangling a rather long time, Fritz. I never suspected you before of being a flirt." Then as Miss Finch groaned aloud, the girl repented of her little witticism and hastened to ask, "Aren't you any nearer to making up your mind?"

"The trouble is, Agatha," sighed Miss Finch, "that there's so many good reasons on both sides, for and against. I've thought and thought till it's seemed as if my head was spinning 'round on my shoulders. You see there was a cousin of my mother's who was a second wife. She married a man named Flagg, and I've heard her tell Ma that she got so sick of hearing about the way the first Mrs. Flagg did things, that if she'd risen up out of her grave, she'd have given her back her husband as quick as she'd have turned her hand over. She said he was always talking about his first wife's mince meat and her mustard pickles and how saving she was, till it seemed as if there wasn't any use in her trying to do things right."

"Well?" Agatha prompted, more to afford Miss Finch the relief of unburdening her mind than because she failed to see the application of the tragedy of the second Mrs. Flagg.

"Deacon Wiggins has been married three times. It's likely that some one of those three women could do pretty near everything better than I can," explained Miss Finch, with characteristic humility. "If it was hard for Cousin Caroline Flagg to have one wife held up to her for an example day and night, I don't know how I'm going to stand three of them."

Agatha patted the limp hand clutching the damp pocket handkerchief. "I'm sure I should find three predecessors a drawback. That's where Mr. Doolittle has the advantage."

"Yes, he seems to have, Agatha. But there's no denying that a man who's lived fifty years without being married to anybody gets dreadfully set in his ways. My father's sister married a man when he was along about fifty, and she was twenty years younger. He was a nice man, but stubborn. For one thing he always kept a pair of extra boots standing under the bed, with the toes sticking out, so he could change quick if he came in. Aunt Hannah was one of the nervous kind and she had looked under the bed for a burglar all her life. When she'd come into the room and see the toes of those boots, it always gave her a turn, and she'd feel sure she'd found him at last. Anybody'd have supposed she'd get used to it after a time, but she never did. She tried her hardest to get him to keep his boots in the closet, and she'd make shoe-bags for him, all bound around with tape and real pretty-looking, but it wasn't any use. He said he'd always kept his boots under the bed, and he'd feel lost if they was anywhere else. Seems as if when a man lives single long enough, he gets to think there ain't but one way of doing things and that's his."

"Deacon Wiggins should be adaptable, then," hazarded Agatha. "He's accommodated himself to the ways of three women."

"There's another thing," Miss Finch continued, ignoring Agatha's tentative encouragement. "And that's the first wife's relations. I remember Cousin Caroline used to say she didn't mind his folks dropping in, and of course she didn't mind her folks, but when his first wife's folks came to Sunday dinner, or to spend the day, she was on pins and needles. And she said if ever the bread wasn't as light as usual, or the roast got overdone, it would be when some of the first Mrs. Flagg's relations stopped for a meal. She'd been a member of the Methodist church from the time she was thirteen, Cousin Caroline had, and she was president of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society, but I've heard her say with my own ears that she'd rather see the devil coming up the walk any day, than one of the Sawyer tribe—the first Mrs. Flagg was a Sawyer. And she had one set of wife's relations to worry her. I—I—if I took Deacon Wiggins, I'd have three."

"If you married James Doolittle," contributed Agatha cheeringly, "you wouldn't be troubled in that way."

"No, I wouldn't. But I'm not sure that too little company wouldn't be worse than too much. Mr. Doolittle ain't ever been what you'd call a social man, and except for that sister of his who lives out west, he hasn't any folks to speak of. And as long as I haven't any, I don't see how between us we could scare up enough mourners for a respectable funeral."

"Oh, come, Fritz, you're talking of weddings, not funerals. It certainly is a pity that these lovers of yours have their advantages—or disadvantages—so evenly balanced. It's like a see-saw, first one's down and then the other, and that makes it hard to come to a decision."

Miss Finch took the banter seriously. "Yes, Agatha, it seems a wicked thing, but I almost wish I'd find out something dreadful about one or the other, like drinking or Sabbath-breaking, and then I'd know what to do. But this weighing things and trying to make up my mind is just wearing me out. Agatha, it ain't what I expected. I supposed it would be an awful pleasant feeling to know that two men wanted you, but the way it's turned out, I don't believe I ever was so worried in my life."

"Perhaps proposals are like wisdom teeth, Fritz, and the slower they are coming, the more trouble they make. But don't forget that you aren't under any obligations to take either of these men. We were getting along fine before they thought of wanting to marry you, and if you say no to both of them, you and I will keep Old Maids' Hall and be happy ever after."

"I don't believe you're likely to remain single," objected Miss Finch with perfect simplicity. "It's a pity that nice Mr. Warren never came again. You could have had that man if you'd tried. Look at the chocolates he sent you, after only seeing you once, and that in your kitchen clothes."

"If my name must be either Kent or Warren, I'll stay an old maid to the end of my days."

"I don't see why you don't like the name Warren, Agatha, and I think Mrs. Ridgeley Warren sounds awfully nice. But you're the one to be pleased. It's a pity Mr. Forbes is so afflicted. If it wasn't for that he'd make a grand husband."

"Mr. Forbes' worst affliction at present," pronounced Agatha tartly, "is being very much in love with an absolutely heartless and generally despicable young woman named Julia."

"My gracious," lamented Miss Finch. "Nice prospect for him, ain't it?"

"Not so bad as you'd think. She's going to marry another man."

"Oh!" Miss Finch's limp hand came suddenly to life, found Agatha's fingers and squeezed them. "Maybe he'll get over it," she hinted.

"Maybe." Something in Agatha's tone suggested she was smiling.

"And then if he'd get his eyesight back, the way he expects to—"

"Then he'd have to be introduced to me all over again. You know he thinks I'm a kittenish old lady of seventy."

"If he doesn't like you better when he finds you're not quite twenty, he's different from most men, that's all." There was a new authority in Miss Finch's pronouncement. She spoke as one who knew the sex, to whom its little idiosyncrasies were an open book. And hardly less significant than the change in herself was the fact that Agatha accepted her altered attitude without surprise.

At the same time the girl's impulsive kiss on her old friend's tear-stained cheek was irrelevantly tender. "I must go back to bed," said Agatha. "It'll soon be time to get up. And don't worry over those adorers of yours. It'll do them good to be kept waiting. Men—most men—need to have the conceit taken out of them."

Though she paused in the doorway to charge Miss Finch to go to sleep immediately, she did not act on her own counsel. Instead she ensconsed herself on the broad sill of the east window and swinging her dangling bare feet, watched the face of the sky slowly brighten, flushing pink at last, like the cheek of a girl. Overhead little rosy clouds floated, like cherubs, listening to the chorus of bird song which grew in volume moment by moment.

Another day was beginning, a good day, Agatha was ready to believe. For though between herself and her heart's desire a tortuous deception lay, to be explained and forgiven, the prospect no longer seemed hopeless. It was an eminently satisfactory world, Agatha decided, with Julia out of the running.

CHAPTER XV

UNDERNEATH THE BOUGH

The kind-hearted Miss Kent had decreed a holiday for Howard. With characteristic thoughtfulness she had volunteered to take Forbes off his hands, and suggested they fill in the time by a long walk with a picnic lunch in some shady place, dinner to be postponed until a convenient hour after their return. Howard showed hilarious approval of the plan, and Forbes aroused himself from his melancholy abstraction sufficiently to agree, whereupon Agatha fell to making sandwiches, giving directions to Phemie as she worked.

Nature in the raw did not appeal to Miss Finch. She hated long walks. She hated sitting on the grass; while sandwiches, without an accompanying cup of tea, were as ashes to her taste. The others accepted her excuses with fortitude, and left her at home to see that Phemie did not set the house afire, and to grope wearily toward a solution of her vexing problem. Howard, having stuffed his pockets with a generous proportion of the sandwiches, shouldered his fishing rod and departed to make the most of his holiday. And while the fragrant freshness of the night still lingered in the air, Forbes and Agatha set out in the direction of the woods.

The serene confidence of her morning vigil still enfolded Agatha. She walked as if keeping time to music, inaudible to all ears but her own. Forbes had insisted on carrying the basket of lunch which also contained a book or two, in case their mood should take a literary turn. Agatha kept fast hold of his arm, the better to steer his steps, and he thought there was a hint of friendliness in the firm clasp. The lonely and unhappy man felt a disproportionate sense of gratitude.

They walked and rested, strolled on and rested again. Neither was inclined to talk. Forbes had plenty to occupy his thoughts, and Agatha, too, was reflective. She realized that the time was at hand when she must confess to Forbes the deception she had practised on him, or else allow him to go out of her life altogether. Neither alternative was agreeable, but the latter was unthinkable.

A scheme occurred to her so in harmony with her native audacity that she dallied with it lovingly, before reluctantly renouncing it as impracticable. She could tell Forbes that she expected a visit from her grand-niece, Agatha Kent, and prejudice him in favor of the newcomer by assuring him of the extraordinary likeness existing between the twentieth-century Agatha and her girlhood self. After the new Agatha's arrival, she could leave him more and more to the society of the younger woman, withdrawing by degrees into the background until her sudden demise would hardly shock him, though he would naturally feel more or less responsible for consoling her namesake and heir. Agatha's final rejection of the plan was due less to doubt of her ability to act the dual rôle, or to manage the embarrassing details of her own interment, than to the realization that if her intimacy with Forbes was to continue, it must be established on a foundation of absolute truth. This deception on which she had entered so light-heartedly, had its sole excuse in the impermanence of their relationship. Before their friendship could become real there must be perfect understanding between them.

They ate their sandwiches shortly after noon, washing them down with deliciously cool water from a convenient spring. The day had grown warm and very still. "It feels as if a thunder-storm might be brewing," Forbes remarked, breaking one of the periods of friendly silence.

"I think not," Agatha answered in a dreamy voice. "Don't you love this stillness here in the shade? It's perfect, perfect!"

"'A book of verses underneath the bough, A loaf of bread, a jug of wine—and thou,'"

quoted Forbes inevitably. He was laughing but the lines stirred her, and to disguise the fact she spoke nonchalantly.

"There is a book of poems in the basket, but I don't care for reading to-day, do you? It's one of the times when you feel everything that has ever been written and more too. You simply want to sit and think how wonderful it is to be alive."

"By jove, it's you that's wonderful," Forbes exclaimed. "That sensitiveness wears off with most people long before they're my age, to say nothing of yours. But you feel the thrill of life and the mystery and the adventure, as if you were a girl."

"Yes," Agatha acquiesced, "I do."

"I'd have known it without your telling me. It's been a continual marvel all through our acquaintance, that ardent freshness of yours. It's confirmed my faith in immortality."

Agatha had no answer ready. He groped for her hand and took possession of it with becoming masterfulness.

"I've got something to say to you, something very important. I've meant to say it for an age, but I've been too much of a coward to risk a no."

Agatha was obliged to remind herself that she was almost seventy years of age. Otherwise she might have suspected she was listening to a proposal.

"Before I can explain my plan, I want to ask you something. Aren't you ever lonely here in winter?"

The question was less formidable than she had anticipated. Her quick assent showed relief.

"And aren't you going to miss me a little when I go back to the city?"

"Of course I shall," she said faintly, and instinctively tried to withdraw her hand. He tightened his hold, laughing.

"Please don't take it away. It does me good, and I'm sure it can't do you any harm. Now you've given me just the encouragement I needed. If you're lonely here, and if you're going to miss me, why shouldn't you and I set up housekeeping together?"

"I—I don't understand." Again Agatha steadied herself with the recollection of her three-score years and seven.

"I'm afraid you've spoiled me," Forbes continued with sudden seriousness. "I've grown shamefully dependent on you. It isn't altogether or chiefly that you've looked after my physical comfort so wonderfully, though, of course, that counts. But you've been so interested in all that concerns me, so sympathetic, such a good pal—" He broke off, apparently at a loss for words. "You're as bracing as an October breeze," he said. "God knows what I should have done without you, this damnable summer."

The thought crossed her mind that this was her opportunity. Now that they were alone, now that he had acknowledged his indebtedness, she could safely throw herself upon his mercy. Her lips parted for her confession, and an overmastering cowardly fear paralyzed the organs of speech. Suppose he refused to forgive her. Then he would go away and she would never see him again. She must make herself still more indispensable. She must foster that feeling of dependence before she risked self-accusation.

"Of course I must be in town next winter," Forbes went on. "Why shouldn't I take a furnished apartment and have you as a sort of mother confessor? We can get some good servants so you will be relieved of all responsibility as far as the establishment is concerned, and your sole duty will be to keep me content with life. How does that appeal to you?"

Agatha heard herself faltering something about Miss Finch.

"Oh, we'll find a place for Miss Finch," Forbes said tolerantly. "I took it for granted Miss Finch would come along, just as I assumed that your shadow would accompany you."

"It may be that Zaida will be married by fall," exclaimed Agatha, seizing the opportunity to postpone the necessity of answering him. She would not have risked the story on Warren, but she trusted Forbes to understand that even while her voice broke with uncontrollable laughter, she was not holding her old friend up to ridicule. As she described Miss Finch's singular quandary, Forbes joined in her laughter, more spontaneously than for many weeks, though he made no effort to conceal his amazement.

"Miss Finch! I begin to feel that I haven't done justice to the lady's charms. She has impressed me as colorless, not faded, you know, but colorless from the start."

"It's well we don't all see alike," Agatha said demurely, though a little startled by his perspicacity.

His next remark took her by surprise. "It's a thousand pities you never married."

Her impertinent retort that there was still time for that, was checked before it left her lips, and replaced by the less hazardous rejoinder, "In that case, probably I shouldn't be sitting here with you."

"True. But my good luck has meant loss to so many. You would have been an incomparable mother. It's a shame you didn't have a dozen children. Do you know I've never in my life felt such a sense of being mothered as I have since I came to Oak Knoll. My own mother was an invalid when I first remember her."

A little confused, but gallantly striving to live up to her maternal rôle, Agatha patted his arm with her disengaged hand. He showed his filial appreciation by kissing the other.

"It wasn't my father's fault, anyway, that you didn't fulfil your destiny. He took me into his confidence the last few months of his life, not in any formal way, you understand, just a word dropped here and there. He was the tenderest of husbands to my mother, but at the last of his life, his thoughts were all with his first love." He turned toward her with a gesture plainly interrogative. "He must have been rather an attractive young fellow."

"He was." Agatha spoke with conviction.

"And still you turned him down. I suppose it would be presumptuous to hazard a guess that there was another man."

"Yes, I think it would be rather presumptuous," Agatha said breathlessly. "Anyway, it's foolish, dragging up old love-affairs. 'Let the dead past bury its dead,' you know, though you modern young folks don't hold Longfellow in such esteem as my generation did."

"I was only thinking that if there was a man who might have married you and didn't, he's probably putting in his time in the next world cursing his luck. But you're not going to be as hard on the son as you were on the father, are you?"

"I—I—do you mean—"

"You're not going to blast all my hopes by saying no. How am I going to get along without you; tell me that?"

"You must give me a little time to think," Agatha protested faintly. She had vowed that morning to avoid all references in the future to her advanced age, but the habit of acting a part was too strong to be overcome by a single resolution. She heard herself continuing mechanically, "Old people don't like to be hurried into important decisions. Leaving the home of so many years and going away with a young man may seem a very little thing to you, but to me it's a real adventure."

"Take all the time you want for reflection," he conceded generously. "Only understand, you must end by saying yes!"

"You might change your mind and not want me," Agatha said. The playfulness oozed out of her tone as she voiced her haunting dread. "You might find out something about me, some trait you had never suspected. I might be any number of awful things—deceitful, for instance." Again the impulse to confession took her by the throat. Again she fought it off almost with terror. It was too soon. She was not ready. She did not know what to say, and moreover the moment was too sweet to spoil.

Forbes laughed tolerantly. "Oh, I'll take the risk. Shall we shake hands on the bargain?"

He was amused by the fervor of her refusal, but his instinct warned him he was carrying his teasing too far. He had a strong conviction that she would end by accepting his proposition, but nothing would be gained by hurrying her to a decision. Though in most things she was strangely younger than her years, her age manifested itself in her reluctance to change the established order. He congratulated himself on broaching the subject early enough to give her time for accustoming herself to the idea.

A comfortable silence fell between them. Forbes stretched himself on the pine needles, and presently dropped off to sleep. He had held to her hand throughout their talk with seeming playfulness, though perhaps underneath was the instinct of the blind man to establish a link between himself and his kind, to touch what he can not see. In his sleep he moved nearer the imprisoned hand, and lay with his cheek touching it. And though her arm grew very tired from staying in one position so long, passing through the various stages from prickles to excruciating pain, and finally to a numbness which made her wonder if she could ever use it again, Agatha did not move. Indeed as she sat listening to his quiet breathing, feeling through the torture of her cramped muscles the touch of his cheek against her hand, her only quarrel with the hour was that it could not last.

CHAPTER XVI

MISS FINCH FOLLOWS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE

Zaida Finch was not ill-pleased at the prospect of a day to herself. Agatha's personality was distracting. It was next to impossible to concentrate your thoughts on your own affairs, however urgent the need, when Agatha was darting about like a bright-plumaged bird, saying things that interested you, even though you frequently found them shocking. "She's a dear girl," Miss Finch reflected, "but upsetting; and I need quiet."

She seated herself upon the broad porch, with the inevitable mending, and wearily began weighing the advantages of one suitor against those of his rival. There was the matter of health to be considered, an important factor in reaching a decision. Zaida remembered a spinster of forty married to a man considerably her senior, who had been a bride three weeks to a day when the bridegroom was smitten with paralysis.

"And poor Linda was nothing but a sick-nurse from that on," mused Miss Finch. "He must have lasted a good twenty years. I never was much of a hand in the sick-room. Nursing would wear me out in no time."

But though caution sharpened her natural acuteness, Miss Finch was unable to award to either of the gentlemen who had honored her, any advantage over the other in the matter of health. She could not remember that Deacon Wiggins had ever been ill, though sickness and death had been familiar guests in his household. James Doolittle frequently walked with a limp due to rheumatic trouble, but James came from long-lived stock, and gave a reassuring impression of toughness. As far as human judgment could play the prophet, she would not be called on to act as nurse to either aspirant, at least for a number of years.

Miss Finch's mending suffered. She found it difficult to employ her brain and her fingers in synchronous activities, and as selecting a husband naturally took precedence over stopping the holes in Howard's socks, she sat much of the morning with her hands lying idle in her lap, her countenance expressing a concentration almost tragic. By noon she was fairly limp from the strain and she went to the kitchen to ask Phemie for a cup of tea.

The sound of wheels recalled her to the porch before her modest luncheon was disposed of. Her first apprehension that either the deacon or James Doolittle was coming to insist on an immediate answer, vanished as she caught sight of two unmistakably feminine figures on the rear seat of the rickety vehicle approaching. But her feeling of reassurance was of brief duration. Almost immediately the conviction seized her that the women were strangers.

Miss Finch stood quaking. Her constitutional shyness had been so cultivated by a lifetime of keeping herself in the background that the prospect of an interview with the unknown women presented itself as an ordeal. It was probable, Miss Finch reflected, that they were city people looking for board. In that case it was only necessary to tell them that they did not wish any additional boarders, and they would have no alternative but to go away. Nevertheless she wished with illogical heartiness that Agatha were at home to assume the responsibility of the interview.

The creaking carryall came to a halt in front of the house. Miss Finch saw that of the two passengers, one was young and one elderly, while both were smartly dressed and formidable. It was the older woman who addressed her, eying her disapprovingly through her lorgnette, and speaking in a tone of incredulity that somehow was offensive.

"My good woman, kindly tell me whether this is Oak Knoll."

"Yes, it is," said Miss Finch, reduced by the lorgnette to abject helplessness.

The driver growled something from the front seat. Miss Finch understood him to say, "Next time maybe you'll believe me."

"And is Mr. Forbes, Mr. Burton Forbes, spending the summer here?" The incredulity was as marked as before and as disagreeable.

"Yes'm," replied Miss Finch faintly. "He is."

The driver growled again. The substance of his remark, as far as Miss Finch could grasp it in her confusion, seemed to be, "What did I tell you?"

But it mattered little to Miss Finch what the driver had to say. A deplorable certainty absorbed her. The women were preparing to alight. There was a trifling delay, owing to the fact they seemed to expect the driver to assist them, while he assured them that he did not dare to leave his horses. As the dejected steeds stood with hanging heads, apparently resigned to the prospect of dying in their traces, the indignation of the two passengers was amply justified.

They were out at last, and while the elderly lady haughtily paid the driver, Miss Finch's distended eyes were taking a rapid inventory of the younger. She was extremely handsome, Miss Finch saw, tall and slender and tremendously striking in her black and white costume. She stood looking about her with an evident disdain which the little spinster might have resented, had she not been chilled by an indefinable fear.

When the beautiful stranger spoke, her remark was a complete surprise. "Miss Kent, I suppose."

Zaida Finch became aware of an inexplicable hostility in the other's manner, of an arrogance that bordered on insolence. She found she was being scrutinized contemptuously. The little drab nonentity felt in her veins an unprecedented stirring of resentment.

"No, I'm not," she said with a flatness that seemed deliberately contradictive. "I'm Miss Finch."

"Be so kind as to call Miss Kent."

"She's out, I'm sorry to say," replied Miss Finch, and her regret was heart-felt. If only Agatha were on hand to give back this presumptuous girl stare for stare, to inquire her errand, in the chilling tone of which Agatha knew the secret, and finally to send her about her business.

"Call Mr. Forbes, then."

"Mr. Forbes is out, too," Miss Finch explained, and a little chill ran down her spine. She had forgotten how imperative it was that Agatha should not encounter any of Forbes' friends. If their unwelcome guests lingered, it would be necessary for Agatha to become Hephzibah again with all the inconveniences attendant on that incarnation. "I've got to get rid of 'em somehow," thought Miss Kent distractedly.

But apparently for the younger of the two strangers, Miss Finch had ceased to exist. She turned to her companion impatiently. "It's dreadfully boring, Aunt Estelle, but Burton is out at present. We'll have to sit on the porch and wait. Fortunately it is shady."

"Yes, it seems to be shady," admitted Aunt Estelle, with an emphasis indicating that as far as the porch was concerned, she could make no further concessions. She climbed the steps looking about her with multiplying evidences of disquiet. "Ask her when Burton will be back," she enjoined, exactly as if Miss Finch had spoken a foreign tongue, and could be addressed only through an interpreter.

Miss Finch did not wait to have the inquiry translated. "I don't know when he'll be back," she said quickly. "Probably he'll be gone all day."

"He'll return for luncheon, I suppose," said Aunt Estelle, grudgingly acknowledging Miss Finch's ability to speak English, but apparently liking her no better on that account.

"No, he won't," declared Miss Finch, with unaccustomed positiveness. "They took sandwiches."

The two women exchanged glances. "Who is with Mr. Forbes?" asked the younger. Her manner implied her right to know.

"Ag—well, Miss Kent went with him." And to herself Miss Finch added wildly, "I can't have a lie on my conscience, even for Agatha."

"Who else was in the party, please?" The young woman in black and white had become a judge, and Miss Finch, the prisoner at the bar.

"There wasn't anybody else," gasped Miss Finch, with every indication of uttering a deliberate and premeditated falsehood.

"Where were they going?"

"I don't know exactly. They were going for a picnic somewhere, but I didn't hear 'em say where. I don't know as they knew themselves."

The judicial sternness became more marked as the prisoner's embarrassment increased. "You mean that Mr. Forbes and Miss Kent have gone off for the day with—sandwiches?" Something in her inflection made the mention of sandwiches the crowning insult to her intelligence.

"Yes," faltered Miss Finch guiltily. "They often take long walks, and carry a picnic lunch."

The older lady spoke with asperity. "It's a preposterous situation. I'm sorry to remind you, Julia, that I said at the start it would be better to telegraph."

Miss Finch started violently. She recalled Agatha's confidential assurance that Forbes was in love with a despicable young woman named Julia, but that the aforesaid Julia was to marry another man. Yet here she was, undeniably handsome, terrifyingly elegant, and worst of all, with no apparent doubt as to her right to be demanding the immediate producing of Mr. Forbes.

The two women had seated themselves, Aunt Estelle ostentatiously dusting the rocker she trusted with her ample person. Miss Finch proffered a belated and reluctant hospitality.

"If you're thinking of sitting here long, I'll see about getting you something to eat."

Julia brushed the offer aside without thanks. "We shall wait for Mr. Forbes."

"It is really absurd, you know," Aunt Estelle contributed, "for us to sit waiting indefinitely. Burton must be somewhere about. A blind man and an old woman can not possibly walk very far. Why are they not sent for?"

As her inquiry was addressed to Julia, Julia passed it on to Miss Finch, her extremely frigid tone indicating that Miss Finch should have thought of that herself.

"There's nobody to send except the hired girl," Miss Finch explained despairingly. "And she never was known to find anything, even if it was right under her nose. If only Howard—"

Miss Finch checked herself abruptly. A thought had flashed across her mind so dazzling in its brilliancy she could hardly believe herself capable of originating it. Indeed, the probability is that she had not done so, but that some extravagant fancy of Agatha's, falling like seed into her subconsciousness, had lain there dormant till the emergency brought it to swift germination. Zaida Finch had never heard of Victor Hugo's saintly nun, crowning a lifetime of sanctity by a devout and holy lie, but unconsciously she was inspired to emulate her example.

With Miss Finch veracity was almost a mania. She was one of the tiresome people who are continually suspecting themselves of exaggeration or of misrepresentation of something absolutely without importance, and then bore their associates by insisting on their attention while they painstakingly correct their statements. Yet now she forgot her habitual dread of falsehood. If a lie were necessary to save Agatha, lie she must.

She resumed her interrupted sentence, pale but resolute. "If only Howard was well, he could look for 'em. He could find 'em if anybody could. But it'll be a good while before he does much running around, I guess."

The two visitors regarded her stonily. In her simplicity she had assumed their cooperation to the extent of a question or two. They would surely ask her who Howard was, or why he was incapacitated. But apparently these matters did not interest them in the slightest degree. It was necessary for Miss Finch to continue her career of mendacity unaided by so much as the lifting of an interrogative eye-brow.

Miss Finch rose to the occasion. "He's sick, you know," she confided to the two pairs of indifferent ears. "High fever, and considerable of a rash—if you'd call it a rash."

Aunt Estelle showed a slight uneasiness. "You've consulted a physician, I suppose."

"We're trying a kind of mental cure first," replied Miss Finch as glibly as if she had practised perjury from her childhood. "And then if that don't work, Ag—Miss Kent is going to call in the doctor. But she don't like to do it till she has to, for it would be awful inconvenient to be quarantined."

"Quarantined," exclaimed Aunt Estelle with fresh evidences of perturbation. "Have you any reason to think that it may be contagious?"

"Most of these rashy diseases are," Miss Finch replied. And though there was no malice in her composition, she was conscious of relishing Aunt Estelle's air of agitation. "I'm hoping it's nothing worse than scarlet fever, though there's been a good many cases of smallpox around here lately. And I don't know that Howard's ever been vaccinated."

Aunt Estelle rose from her chair with a little cry. In her palpitating pallor she reminded Miss Finch irresistibly of blanc-mange.

"Smallpox, Julia," she exclaimed. "Do you hear what the woman says—smallpox! Even if we escape with our lives, one's complexion—oh, my God! Why did I ever listen to this mad idea of yours!"

Julia's composure was in refreshing contrast to her aunt's excitement. She rose, it is true, but only to advance to the older woman's side and whisper in her ear. And having whispered, she calmly resumed her seat, and looked away toward the hills, apparently intensely interested in the scenery.

Aunt Estelle stood irresolute. "Do you really think so?"

"I'm absolutely sure of it," said Julia.

"I think I noticed a little wildness in the eye myself," Aunt Estelle conceded, with a return of her earlier conviction of Miss Finch's inability to understand English.

"Unmistakable," opined Julia.

Miss Finch looked blankly from one to the other and hope was at low ebb. They were going to stay. She had thrilled with childlike pride at the discovery of her own inventiveness, culpable though it might be. Complacency had whispered that Agatha herself could not have done better. And now she realized that her effort had failed. She had sacrificed her conscience to friendship, and the sacrifice had been in vain. Though not so quick-witted as many another, she had no difficulty in recognizing the conclusion these strangers had reached. To herself she said, "They think I'm crazy."

Miss Finch was not at the end of her resources. Her lapse from the path of rectitude had proved strangely stimulating to the imagination. She meant to get rid of these women before Agatha returned. Agatha would be equal to the emergency provided she were not taken by surprise. If Julia and her aunt were not afraid of smallpox, it was possible that they might be afraid of a crazy woman who showed signs of becoming violent.

"G-r-r-r-r—" said Miss Finch menacingly. Aunt Estelle jumped and took another chair. For the first time in her life, Miss Finch felt herself at no disadvantage because of her insignificant proportions. "G-r-r-r-r-r—" she said again.

"Julia," exclaimed Aunt Estelle nervously, "do you really think it's safe—"

The intrepidity of the modern young woman passes comprehension. "Harmless, I imagine," Julia said with nonchalance. "Otherwise Burton would hardly have remained."

"Why he should have remained in this place under any circumstances," declared Aunt Estelle, "passes my comprehension."

"There must be some reason we know nothing about. Burton will explain." Something in Julia's tone implied that Forbes would not find explanations altogether easy. She added with evident relief, "Here he comes now."

"Thank heaven!" cried Aunt Estelle piously.

Miss Finch looked wildly in the direction of Julia's steadfast gaze. All was over. Arm in arm across the grass, so absorbed in each other that the girl was as blind as the man to the audience on the porch, came Agatha and Forbes.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

Forbes woke refreshed from his sylvan nap, and sat for a little discoursing on the invigorating effect of contact with mother earth, while Agatha, by drastic massage, restored the circulation to her temporarily paralyzed arm. The sun had dipped but little toward the western horizon when they turned their faces homeward, and they walked slowly. Agatha exulted in heat. A temperature of ninety stimulated her both physically and mentally. But Forbes found the warmth of the day relaxing, and she set the pace with that fact in mind.

Toward the last of their long leisurely walk, Forbes brought up the subject he had introduced earlier in the day. Though he made no effort to hurry her to a decision, he sketched entertainingly some of the diversions she might anticipate, if she accepted his invitation for the winter. The program was planned with due regard for the infirmities of age, but Agatha listened raptly.

They were but a few rods from their destination, Forbes talking earnestly, and Agatha hanging on his words, when some mysterious sixth sense warned her of danger. She looked ahead and instantly halted. Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a new realization of his helplessness.

Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It could be no other than Julia. The ample lady in the background, following with a haste that empurpled her complexion, that she might not be left tête-à-tête with a maniac, failed to attract Agatha's attention. Julia's graceful figure dominated the landscape.

"What is the matter?" Forbes again demanded. He laid his hand reassuringly over the fingers trembling upon his arm. And at that moment a voice subtly reproachful, suggestively tender, spoke his name. "Burton!"

"Julia!" Forbes shouted. His dear old friend, Miss Kent, and her mysterious perturbation, were instantly forgotten. He started forward, remembered that he was blind, stood irresolute, his hands outstretched. "Julia!" he cried again, this time with entreaty as well as rapture.

Agatha was ready to believe that then and there she had amply atoned for her sins, past and present. Even the certainty that the hour of her humiliation was at hand could not hurt worse than the joy ringing through his voice as he spoke another woman's name. She wondered dully at her own folly. She had been warned and had not heeded. She had known all the time of his love for Julia, and yet had foolishly assumed that since Julia's selfish decision had put her out of his reach, he would turn to her for consolation. Her pride had not rebelled over taking what Julia had thrown away. Indeed she had thought very little about herself. Her one desire was to be light to his blind eyes, balm to his wounded heart. But her castle of dreams was in ruins, as soon as he spoke the name she had hated from the first day she had heard it on his lips.

Julia approached him as swiftly as was consistent with grace, a rather insolent triumph in the glance she shot over his shoulder toward the pale girl standing in the background. "Yes, Burton," she said gently, "it is Julia," and extended both hands.

He caught them ardently and held them fast, his eager face questioning her dumbly, though he only said, "What a wonderful surprise! How good of you, how very good of you!"

"My aunt, Mrs. Knox, is with me, Burton," continued Julia, the pensiveness of her tone flatly contradicted by her air of elation. "I think you have met Mr. Forbes, Aunt Estelle."

Aunt Estelle, still panting, brought herself into hand-shaking distance and this formality helped to recall Forbes to the realization that there were other people in the world besides Julia and himself. He turned toward Agatha.

"This is a pleasure I have been promising myself," he said. "Julia, I want you to know my dear friend, Miss Kent. Miss Kent, let me present Mrs. Knox and Miss Studley."

The blankness of the silence that ensued was as definite as a blow. Forbes stood awaiting the conventional formula, but his quick ear could detect only the sound of hurried breathing. Again he turned toward Agatha, but for the first time she failed him.

"Miss Kent is still here, is she not?" queried Forbes. He remembered his ideas had been chaotic after discovering Julia's presence. His late companion might easily have withdrawn without attracting his attention.

For so simple a question, the effect was startling. "Burton," Julia cried, her voice sharp to the point of shrillness, "what are you talking about?"

Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."

Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am here."

Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. There was a bewilderment in his voice that wrung Agatha's heart.

"This is what I have been hoping for all summer. You know how often I've wished you and Miss Studley might know each other."

"Burton," Julia screamed, "who and what is this person?"

The contempt in her tone, even more than her disdainful phrasing, brought the blood racing to his forehead. "Julia!" He seemed to defy her to go on. "If you have read my letters at all," he said in a vibrant voice, "you know both who Miss Kent is and how much I am in her debt."

"Miss Kent! Your father's friend!"

"And mine as well, Julia." There was no ecstatic tenderness now in his use of her name, but indignant sternness.

"Burton, either you are insane or the woman is an impostor. She is not old. She is young, hardly more than a girl."

Forbes attempted to reply, but for a moment no words came. He put his hand to his forehead with a confused gesture. "I have been off in the woods with Miss Kent all day," he stammered. "I supposed—I had not noticed—" Again he turned in Agatha's direction. "Who are you, please?"

There was no trace of emotion in her composed answer. "I am Agatha Kent."

"Do you dare to say," shrieked Julia, "that you were the friend of Mr. Forbes' father?"

"I never saw Mr. Forbes' father."

Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"

"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died twelve years ago."

There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to break.

"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old woman, allowing him to think—oh, it's too shameful. I can't believe any girl would be so base."

"It is quite true, nevertheless," Agatha assured her gently. Her steady eyes met Julia's, and even that intrepid young woman drew back a step. Her momentary shrinking was not unreasonable for could concentrated hate smite like a lightning bolt, her life would have been measured by seconds.

Instinct taught Julia how to repay that level look by the deadliest hurt. She turned on Forbes furiously. "Do you mean to tell me that you have been the victim of a hoax all summer, that this girl has passed herself off on you for an old woman? But, no, it isn't possible. You've contrived this outrageous story between you to cover up something disgraceful. You couldn't have been such a dupe as you pretend. It's incredible!"

Forbes' color came and went during this attack. "It seems incredible," he owned when she gave him opportunity. "I don't blame you for questioning the truth of such a story. I can only remind you that it is easy to deceive a blind man."

Something in Agatha's stony whiteness convinced Julia that she had made no mistake in her choice of retribution. She gave the screws another turn.

"You mean for me to believe, Burton, that you've been only the gullible victim of a swindle, that this impostor has tricked you successfully all these months?"

There was a rather long silence. "Yes," said Forbes tonelessly, "that is what I mean."

Julia's first sense of being at a disadvantage had passed. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.

"I begin to understand your strange letter," she said, addressing Agatha. "Your letter of congratulation, you know. I suppose you are the young woman to whom you referred, the one with whom Mr. Forbes had spent so much time, you no doubt remember."

There was such malicious satisfaction in her tone that Forbes turned as if to interfere. Then his uplifted arm dropped rather heavily to his side.

"You'll laugh when I tell you, Burton," exclaimed Julia, setting him the example by laughing herself, most unpleasantly. "But she insinuated in this letter that you might marry her. That is at the bottom of this outrageous plot. She actually thought she could compromise you in some dreadful way and force you to marry her. Shocking as it is, one can't help being amused."

Forbes' only answer was again to lift his hand to his head. It was Agatha who spoke. Unmasked adventuress as she was, her dignity was in rather agreeable contrast to Julia's vindictive shrillness.

"It is hardly necessary to trouble Mr. Forbes with any further details," she said, "since, thanks to you, my plot against his peace has been exposed. I suppose you will want to take him away as soon as possible."

"Oh, at once." Julia showed signs of becoming hysterical. "The very first train. I feel as if I couldn't breathe in this atmosphere of deceit."

"I'm afraid there is no train before five o'clock, but I'll have the carriage ready in plenty of time. And now, if you will excuse me, I shall see about getting you some luncheon."

"Luncheon! Good heavens, I couldn't eat a mouthful. It would choke me."

Mrs. Knox seconded her niece admirably. "It would not be safe, Julia. A person capable of all this would not hesitate to poison our food."

Agatha accepted this tribute without comment. "Will you pack Mr. Forbes' things yourself?" she said, addressing Julia.

Again Mrs. Knox intervened. "Julia, I forbid you to go into that house, with this girl, and that dreadful, crazy creature—"

Forbes interrupted with signs of irritation. "You said that once before. There is no insane woman here."

"I am afraid you are not a very good judge of what is or is not here, Mr. Forbes," replied Aunt Estelle, scoring again. "We had a most unpleasant encounter with a woman clearly insane. She positively gibbered."

"Yes, Burton," Julia cried with shrewish enjoyment, "you have been made a laughing-stock all summer, poor dear. You've kept writing about this fine old place. I wish you could see it. It's simply in the last stages of dilapidation."

"It's ready to fall to pieces," corroborated Aunt Estelle. "I didn't venture inside, but the glimpses of the interior I got from the window showed that everything was fairly moth-eaten."

"Yes," Agatha admitted quietly. "We are very poor, so poor that a blind boarder seemed providential. Won't you sit on the porch till the carriage is ready?" she added politely. "I'm sure Mr. Forbes is tired after his long walk."

"Oh, please," protested Julia, her self-control shaken by the other's calm, "please drop this pretext of being so interested in Mr. Forbes' welfare. After the fraud you have practised on him all summer you can hardly expect him to believe anything you say."

"Oh, no," said Agatha. "I don't expect that for a moment. And now if you're sure you won't eat a little luncheon, I'll bid you all good afternoon." She went across the grass to the house, carrying herself with her chin high, moving deliberately. No one could have guessed the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any intervening stages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her pulses.

A little after three the carryall appeared. Howard was driving, and Forbes' suit-case and other impedimenta lay on the seat beside him. As he helped his passengers in, he explained that the trunk would be sent by express next day. This announcement was received in frigid silence whereupon Howard, too, became sulkily silent and used the whip on the fat bays with such effect that they covered the five miles between Oak Knoll and the village station at an unprecedented rate of speed.

Forbes thawed a little when Howard helped him to alight, and stood for a moment beside him. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes," the boy said huskily. "I'm awfully sorry you're going."

He put out his hand and after an instant's hesitation Forbes gripped it. He had grown fond of the boy. "Oh, Howard," he said, his voice betraying his hurt, "I wouldn't have believed it of you."

He heard Howard gulp and then burst out sobbing. Fortunately for the boy's pride, the hour was early and the station platform lacked its customary contingent of loafers.

"We didn't mean anything, Mr. Forbes," Howard choked. "Aggie wanted to take boarders, so she could send me to school, but when they saw how old and shabby the house was, they wouldn't come."

"Is she your sister?"

"Kind of one. Her father married my mother. She's better than a thousand real sisters."

"Burton," said Julia's voice beside them, "I wouldn't encourage the boy by listening to him. Probably that young woman has coached him in a new series of lies."

"Aggie never tells lies," Howard challenged her hotly. "This was like a charade or something. Mr. Forbes thought she was old and so she pretended to be. We had lots of fun and it didn't do anybody any harm." He appealed to Forbes. "She took good care of you anyway, didn't she, Mr. Forbes?"

"Really, Burton," expostulated Julia, "I can not allow this to go on. These people evidently regard you as fair game. It's dreadful that your blindness should put you so at the mercy of the unscrupulous, but I shall see that you are not imposed on while I am with you. Send this boy away."

"He doesn't need to send me away," Howard exploded indignantly. "I'm going." He seized Forbes' hand again. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes. Come and see us some time."

Julia gasped. "Did any one ever imagine such impertinence!" she asked of high heaven. "Such people seem to be without natural shame. I suppose they are so accustomed to being found out in falsehood and fraud that they take it as a matter of course. In the interest of justice there should be some way of punishing them. Couldn't they be prosecuted, Burton, for obtaining money under false pretenses?"

Forbes made no reply. Apparently he did not share Julia's lofty enthusiasm for abstract justice. His air of bewildered dejection suggested a lost child, rather than a man rescued from a false and intolerable position by the lady of his heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

WARREN GETS A TIP

Ridgeley Warren had been to the station to bid a friend bon voyage. He presented himself armed with a box of chocolates, the latest novel and three brand-new witticisms culled from a roof-garden program the previous evening. The pretty girl had accepted his offerings with marked graciousness and had laughed convulsively at each of the jokes, thereby intensifying Warren's habitual sense of being on good terms with himself and all the world. His spirits unclouded by the pang of parting, he strolled toward the exit, trying to decide where to dine, when his own name reached his ears coupled with a fervent ejaculation, "Mr. Warren! Thank heaven!"

Warren spun on his heel to encounter Julia advancing with extended hand. Julia was not one of Warren's favorites, but her pleasure at the sight of him was contagious. "Gosh!" he exclaimed agreeably, "this is luck."

It was while shaking hands with Julia that Warren became aware of Mrs. Knox's imposing figure in the background. And scarcely had he lifted his hat in recognition of her presence, when his eye fell on Forbes, a pale and woebegone object, committed to the clumsy guardianship of a station porter.

Warren turned on Julia blithely. "Don't tell me you've sprung a surprise on us. Don't say that I should have come with my pockets full of rice."

"Oh, Mr. Warren, be serious, please." There was gentle reproach in Julia's uplifted eyes. "It seems really providential meeting you here. Now you can take charge of Burton till he finds some suitable person to look after him."

"What's become of the nice little chap who has been on the job all summer?"

"Oh, Mr. Warren!" Julia's gesture indicated the futility of attempting immediate explanations. "It's a long, a dreadful story, and it will take time to make you understand."

"Hm! I'm not usually considered so dense."

"But this isn't like anything else. It's incredible. I can hardly believe it myself. Let's go to some quiet place where we can have dinner and talk things over."

"Yes, for heaven's sake, let us have dinner," snapped Mrs. Knox. An unusually early hour of rising, together with a mid-day fast, had reduced her to an unwonted state of nervous irritability. Forbes, too, seemed wrapped in impenetrable gloom. It was not a cheerful party.

Warren's curiosity was aroused. He found a taxi, bundled the dejected trio inside and gave the driver directions. He was rather shocked to see how ill Forbes looked on nearer view, but he concealed that emotion under his usual cloak of levity, and told humorous stories all the way to their destination, covering the lack of responsiveness on the part of his audience by roars of appreciative laughter.