his affairs aren't
in any too good shape, as he may have told you."

"Isn't the business all right?" queried Lois, with a puzzled fear.

"Oh, yes, of course--all right; but--I wouldn't go around wondering
about his being away; he's got his own reasons. You haven't a telephone,
have you? I'll send around word to have one put in to-day. I'll tell you
what: I'll ask Bailey Girard to come around and see you on the
quiet--he's got lots of wires he can pull. You won't need me any more."

Leverich's meeting with Dosia had been characterized by a sort of
brusque uninterest. He seemed to her indefinably lowered and coarsened
in some way; his cheeks sagged; in his eyes was an unpleasant admission
that he must bluster to avoid the detection of some weakness. And Dosia
had lived in his house, eaten at his table, received benefits from him,
caressed him prettily! He had been really kind to her. She ought not to
let that fact be defaced. But everything connected with that time seemed
now to lower her in retrospect, to fill her with a sort of horror. All
his loud rebuttal of anxiety now could not cover an undercurrent of
uneasiness that made the anxiety of the two women tenfold greater when
he was gone.

Mr. Girard had come twice the next morning. Dosia, as well as Lois, had
seen him both times. He had greeted her with matter-of-fact courtesy,
and appealed to her with earnest painstaking, whenever necessary, for
details or confirmation, in their mutual office of helpers to Mrs.
Alexander; but the retrieving warmth and intimacy of his manner the day
he had avoided her in the street was lacking. There was certainly
nothing in Dosia's quietly impersonal attitude to call it forth. Her
face no longer swiftly mirrored each fleeting emotion at all times, for
any one to see. Poor Dosia had learned in a bitter school her woman's
lesson of concealment.

But, if Girard were only sensibly consulting with her, toward Lois his
sympathy was instinct with strength and helpfulness. He seemed to have
affiliations with reporters, with telegraph operators, with a hundred
lower runways of life unknown to other people. He gave the tortured wife
the feeling so dear, so sustaining to one in sorrow, of his being
entirely one with her in its absorption--of there being no other
interest, no other issue in life, but this one of Justin's return. When
Girard came, bright and alert and confident, all fears seemed to be set
at rest; during the few minutes that