y had come and gone in a short
year, to leave them closer to each other, but each with a heart pain
that never ceased.

A bell boy interrupted her lecture to bring in a card, and Mrs. Clancy,
glancing at it, passed it over to Miss Tabor.

"'Tis for you, Betty girl," she said. "And, Mother of Mary, she'll see
us this way"----

Betty Tabor sat staring at the card, at first puzzled, then in a panic
of mingled emotions.

"Tell her to come up," she said. "I'll see her here. Mother Clancy,
don't you dare hide."

The girl hastily arranged her hair and straightened the room, and a few
minutes later, when the boy ushered the visitor into the apartments,
she was self-possessed and cool. She arose as the door opened, and
started forward to meet her guest, but stopped staring as the color
faded from her face and then slowly heightened.

"You are Miss Tabor?" inquired the visitor, her voice trembling from
excitement and nervousness.

"Yes. You are Miss Helen Baldwin; you desired to see me?"

The sight of the girl she had seen talking with Kohinoor McCarthy in
the hotel parlor, shortly after he joined the club, had shaken her
composure.

"Oh, Miss Tabor," Helen Baldwin cried, sinking into a chair and giving
way to her emotions. "I had to come--I had nowhere else to go--and
they told me over the telephone only you and Mrs. Clancy were here and
all the men of the team away."

"If it is baseball business," replied Miss Tabor, "perhaps you'd better
see Mrs. Clancy. I'll call her"----

"No! no! no!" expostulated the girl, drying her eyes. "It is you I
must see. Have you heard anything from Mr. McCarthy?"

"I have no especial reason to hear from Mr. McCarthy," said Miss Tabor,
freezing slowly. "I suppose he is with the team."

"He isn't! He isn't!" pleaded the girl. "He has disappeared----
Haven't you seen the papers?"

"Mr. McCarthy disappeared! Where? When?" Betty Tabor had forgotten
her jealousy in her startled alarm. "He isn't with the team?"

"I read it in the papers," sobbed Helen Baldwin. "He was at my house
last evening. He left there--and he has disappeared. I hoped you
might know."

"At your house?" Betty Tabor's alarm struggled with her jealousy.
"And he's gone? Let me see the paper."

"I haven't seen him, Miss Baldwin," she said, after glancing at the
paper. "We thought he had gone with the team. Tell me what you know.
Perhaps we may help you. You were engaged to him, were you not?