h all a woman's interest in such things, and himself discussing
with her this house in which she expected him to place her as mistress.
And the position she thought she held in his heart--vacant, or---- He
leaned against a fence, in bewilderment approaching despair. His mind
dwelt with horror on the woman whom he could think of only under the
coarse appellation of the strawberry blonde. Was there a real crime
here to take the place of the imagined putting away of Brassfield?
Brassfield! The very name sickened him. "Strawberry blondes, indeed!"
thought Florian; and "Brassfield, the perjured villain!" Certain names
used by the little man in the wrong house came to him as having been
mentioned in the notes of the professor and the judge. Alvord, the
slangy little chap who took so familiar an attitude toward him--this
was the judge's "ministerial" friend! Yet, had there not been mention
of "ritualistic work" and "Early Christians" in his conversation? And
this woman of whom he spoke,--it took no great keenness of perception
to see that the "strawberry blonde" must be the "child of six or eight
years" whom he had called "Daisy," and sometimes "Strawberry!" Here
was confirmation of Alvord's suspicion, if his allusion to the
violation of an "obligation" expressed suspicion. Here was a situation
from which every fiber of Amidon's nature revolted, seen from any
angle, whether the viewpoint of the careful banker and pillar of
society, or that of the poetic dreamer waiting for his predestined mate.

In a paroxysm of dread, he started for the hotel. Then he walked down
the street toward the railway station, with the thought of boarding the
first train out of town. This resolve, however, he changed, and I am
glad to say that it was not the thought of the fortune of which Judge
Blodgett had spoken that altered his resolution, but that of the letter
which greeted his return to consciousness as Florian Amidon, and the
image of the dark-eyed girl with the low voice and the strong figure,
who had written it, and who waited for him, somewhere, with the roll of
plans. So he began searching again for the house with the white
columns; and found it on the next corner beyond the one he had first
tried.

Elizabeth sat in a fit of depression at the strangeness of Mr.
Brassfield's conduct--a depression which deepened as the evening wore
on with no visit from him. She sprang to her feet and pressed both
hands to her bosom, at the r