ghed again. "There's one thing you seem not to
have noticed, Mildred."

"What's that?"

"It seems to have escaped your attention that he never said a word."

"Mightn't that mean----?" Mildred began, but she stopped.

"No, it mightn't," her mother replied, comprehending easily. "On the
contrary, it might mean that instead of his feeling it too deeply to
speak, he was getting a little illumination."

Mildred rose and came to her. "WHY do you suppose he never told us he
went there? Do you think he's--do you think he's pleased with her, and
yet ashamed of it? WHY do you suppose he's never spoken of it?"

"Ah, that," Mrs. Palmer said,--"that might possibly be her own doing.
If it is, she's well paid by what your father and I said, because we
wouldn't have said it if we'd known that Arthur----" She checked herself
quickly. Looking over her daughter's shoulder, she saw the two gentlemen
coming from the corridor toward the wide doorway of the room; and she
greeted them cheerfully. "If you've finished with each other for a
while," she added, "Arthur may find it a relief to put his thoughts on
something prettier than a trust company--and more fragrant."

Arthur came to Mildred.

"Your mother said at lunch that perhaps you'd----"

"I didn't say 'perhaps,' Arthur," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, to correct
him. "I said she would. If you care to see and smell those lovely things
out yonder, she'll show them to you. Run along, children!"

Half an hour later, glancing from a window, she saw them come from
the hothouses and slowly cross the lawn. Arthur had a fine rose in his
buttonhole and looked profoundly thoughtful.

CHAPTER XXI

That morning and noon had been warm, though the stirrings of a feeble
breeze made weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at about three
o'clock in the afternoon there came out of the southwest a heat like an
affliction sent upon an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of
it. Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires praising hell and
hot weather, as the tossing shovels flickered up to the street level,
where sluggish male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and
fanned themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, wore soaked
handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent, big
department stores, stenographers in offices kept as close to electric
fans as the intervening bulk of their employers would let them; guests
in hotels left the lobbies and went t