gone away in such a strange manner."

So she had already told him! The little pang of unworthy jealousy came
back, but I banished it.

"Now, there must be no more time lost," he went on. "You have had no
man to look after things for you, but remember now, your old brother,
Jack, is on the job. First, I must know everything that occurred on
that last day. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his demeanor
on that last morning you saw him?"

This was the old Jack, going directly to the root of the matter,
wasting no time on his own affairs or feelings, when he saw a duty
before him. I felt the old sway of his personality upon me, and
answered his questions as meekly as a child might have done.

"He was just the same as he had been every morning since my accident,"
I returned.

"H-m." Jack thought a long minute, then began again.

"Tell me everything that happened that day, every visitor you had;
don't omit the most trifling thing," he commanded.

He listened attentively as I recalled Harry Underwood's visit, and
Robert Gordon's. At my revelation that Robert Gordon had said he was
my father, his calm, judicial manner broke into excitement.

"Your father!" he exclaimed, and then, after a pause; "I always knew
he would come back some day. But go on. What happened when he told you
he was your father?"

I went on with the story of my struggle with my own rancor against my
father, of my conviction that I had heard my mother's voice urging my
reconciliation with him, of my father's first embrace and kisses, even
of the queer smothered sound like a groan and the slamming of a door
which I had heard. Then I told him of my father's gift of money to me,
which I had not yet touched, but I noticed that toward the last of my
narrative Jack seemed preoccupied.

"Did your husband come home to Marvin at all that day?" he asked.

"No, he never came back from the city after he had once gone in, until
evening."

"But are you sure that this day he did not return to Marvin?" he
persisted. "How do you know?"

"Because no one saw him," I returned, "and he could hardly have come
back without someone in the house seeing him."

He said no more, as Lillian and Katherine came up just then, and the
conversation became general.

To my great surprise, I did not see him again after that first visit.
Katherine explained to me that he had been called out of town on
urgent business, but the explanation seemed to me to savor of the
mys