s down. It seemed to him that
one was tall and slight, and the other slight and little.

III.

He stopped in the hall, and then, tempted by his despair, he stepped
within the open door of the next room and looked vaguely over it, with
shame at being there. What was it that the girl had missed, and had come
back to look for? Some trifle, no doubt, which she had not cared to
lose, and yet had not wished to leave behind. He failed to find anything
in the search, which he could not make very thorough, and he was going
guiltily out when his eye fell upon an envelope, perversely fallen
beside the door and almost indiscernible against the white paint, with
the addressed surface inward.

This must be the object of her search, and he could understand why she
was not very anxious when he found it a circular from a nursery-man,
containing nothing more valuable than a list of flowering shrubs. He
satisfied himself that this was all without satisfying himself that he
had quite a right to do so; and he stood abashed in the presence of the
superscription on the envelope somewhat as if Miss Barbara F. Simpson,
Upper Ashton Falls, N. H., were there to see him tampering with her
correspondence. It was indelicate, and he felt that his whole behavior
had been indelicate, from the moment her laugh had wakened him in the
night till now, when he had invaded her room. He had no more doubt that
she was the taller of the two girls than that this was her name on the
envelope. He liked Barbara; and Simpson could be changed. He seemed to
hear her soft throaty laugh in response to the suggestion, and with a
leap of the heart he slipped the circular into his breast pocket.

After breakfast he went to the hotel office, and stood leaning on the
long counter and talking with the clerk till he could gather courage to
look at the register, where he knew the names of these girls must be
written. He asked where Upper Ashton Falls was, and whether it would be
a pleasant place to spend a week.

The clerk said that it was about thirty miles up the road, and was one
of the nicest places in the mountains; Langbourne could not go to a
nicer; and there was a very good little hotel. "Why," he said, "there
were two ladies here overnight that just left for there, on the
seven-forty. Odd you should ask about it."

Langbourne owned that it was odd, and then he asked if the ladies lived
at Upper Ashton Falls, or were merely summer folks.

"Well, a little of bo