en he went over the
prices again at which he had disposed of his holdings to the bank, and
he was sure he had made good bargains in every case for the bank. So
it was all fair, he argued for the thousandth time--he was all square
with the world. He had left a deposit subject to his check of twenty
thousand dollars--that ought to do until they could get on their feet
somewhere; and it was all his, he said to himself--all his, and no
one's business.

And when he thought of the other part, the voice of Adrian Brownwell
saying, "Well, come on, old lady, we must be going," rose in his
consciousness. It was not so much Brownwell's words, as his air of
patronage and possession; it was cheerful enough, quite gay in fact,
but Hendricks asked himself a hundred times why the man didn't whistle
for her, and clamp a steel collar about her neck. He wondered
cynically if at the bottom of Brownwell's heart, he would not rather
have the check for twelve thousand dollars which Hendricks had left
for Colonel Culpepper, to pay off the Brownwell note, than to have his
wife. For seven years the colonel had been cheerfully neglecting it,
and now Hendricks knew that Adrian was troubling him about the old
debt.

As he rounded the depot for the tenth time he got back to their last
meeting. There stood General Ward with his arm about the girlish waist
of Mrs. Ward, the mother of seven. There was John Barclay with Jane
beside him, and they were holding hands like lovers. The Ward children
were running like rabbits over the broad lawn under the elms, and
there, talking to the wide, wide world, was Adrian Brownwell,
propounding the philosophy of the _Banner_, and quoting from last
week's editorials. And there sat Bob and Molly by the flower bed that
bordered the porch.

"I am going to the city to hear Gilmore," he said. That was simple
enough, and her sigh had no meaning either. It was just a weary little
sigh, such as women sometimes bring forth when they decide to say
something else. So she had said: "I'll be all alone next week. I think
I'll visit Jane--if she's in town."

Then something throbbed in his brain and made him say:--

"So you'd like to hear Gilmore, too?"

She coloured and was silent, and the pulse of madness that was beating
in her made her answer:--

"Oh--I can't--you know the folks are going to Washington to the
encampment, and Adrian is going as far as Cleveland with the
delegation to write it up."

An impulse loosened