h the outer office and the moment of leave-taking
had arrived.

"Why not?" she asked frankly. "You have always been welcome, and you
always will be."

He hesitated, and a blond man's flush crept up under his honest eyes.
"I've been hoping all day that you didn't really mean what you said this
morning--about my mother and sister, you know," he ventured.

"Yes," she affirmed relentlessly; "I did mean it."

"But some day you will change your mind--when you come to know them
better."

"Shall I?" she said, with a ghost of a smile. "Perhaps you are
right--when I come to know them better."

He was obliged to let it go at that; but when they reached the phaeton,
and the horse-holding clerk had been relieved, he spoke of another
matter.

"I'm a little worried about Kenneth," he told her. "He came down this
morning looking positively wretched, but he wouldn't admit that he was
sick. Have you seen much of him lately?"

"Not very much"--guardedly. "Did you say he had gone home?"

"I don't know where he has gone. He left here about half an hour before
you came, and I haven't seen him since."

"And you are worried because he doesn't look well?"

"Not altogether on that account. I'm afraid he is in deep water of some
kind. I never saw a person change as he has in the past week or so. You
know him pretty well, and what a big heart he has?"

She nodded, half-mechanically.

"Well, there have been times lately when I've been afraid he'd kill
somebody--in this squabble of ours, you know. He has been going
armed--which was excusable enough, under the circumstances--and night
before last, when we were walking up-town together, I had all I could do
to keep him from taking a pot-shot at a fellow who, he thought, was
following us. I don't know but I'm taking all sorts of an unfair
advantage of him, telling you this behind his back, but----"

"No; I'm glad you have told me. Maybe I can help."

He put her into the low basket seat, and tucked the dust-robe around her
carefully. While he was doing it he looked up into her face and said:
"I'd love you awfully hard for what you have done to-day--if you'd let
me."

It was like her to smile straight into his eyes when she answered him.

"When you can say that--in just that way--to the right woman, you'll
find a great happiness lying in wait for you, Edward, dear." And then
she spoke to the Morgan mare and distance came between.

As once before, in the earlier hours of the same da