so calm, so simple--no shock at all. Why had I never known? And all
this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave!
I must tell his father....

She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to
steady myself. My cheeks were all wet.

"Mr. Vail seems very contented," she said. "Of course, I am accustomed
to looking after him."

She stepped quietly through an open door, the keys jangling softly at
her belt.

* * * * *

I went South with my husband for a fortnight, and on my return Will
dined with us.

"By the way," he said, "were you surprised at Vail's death?"

It was three days' news and I had forgotten to mention it.

"He never was the same after the pneumonia, and he worried about his
daughter Irene. She came through all right, though. Well, he was over
sixty."

"How--what became of Mrs. Leeth?" I asked eagerly.

He smiled oddly.

"Nobody knows. She's never been seen since the funeral."

"Never been seen? But who is the housekeeper, then?"

"Oh, they've got another. Never'll be Mrs. Leeth's equal, though. She
left on the first of the month."

"But when she was paid off, didn't anybody inquire?"

"She never was paid off," he said quietly. "She never came for her
money."

THE UNBURIED

The talk shifted at length--as it inevitably must--to women, and the
unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged
and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling
shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the
fairest cape.

"There's no good asking 'why,'" said the great doctor slowly, "you
might as well ask, 'why not.' They're incomprehensible. For thirty
years I've studied them. Thirty years...."

He leaned forward over the table weightily. The others unconsciously
bent toward him.

"Once I thought it was spasmodic--unrelated," he went on thoughtfully,
counting his words, it seemed, "but not now. No. I believe there is a
law--a big law--they follow, an orbit so extended that any examples one
may collect count for too little to help. They seem to vary..." he
stared at the siphons and rings of wet on the table.

Outside the club windows the rain fell, glistening and grey; it was
making for dusk and the black stream of hansoms and umbrellas were
homeward bound. They motioned away the servant who had come to turn on
the lights in their corner.

"There ar