rry in Van
Lennop's handwriting. Looking closer she saw the end of a second
envelope behind the first. To whom could he have written? In some
respects Dr. Harpe had the curiosity of a servant and it now prompted
her to walk behind the desk and gratify it.

"Miss Essie Tisdale" was the address on the second envelope. Instantly
her face changed and the swift, jealous rage of the evening before swept
over her again.

She ground her teeth together as she regarded the letter with malice
glittering in her heavy eyes. He was writing to her, then, the little
upstart, that infernal little biscuit-shooter!

Shorty, the cook, was rattling the kitchen range. She listened a moment.
There was no other sound. She thrust the letter quickly beneath the line
of her low-cut bodice and tiptoed up the stairs with slinking, feline
stealth.

XIX

"DOWN AND OUT"

Dr. Harpe ripped open the envelope addressed to Essie Tisdale and
devoured its contents standing by the window, bare-shouldered in the
dawn. Long before she had finished reading her hand shook with
excitement, and her nose looked pinched and drawn about the nostrils. As
a matter of fact the woman was being dealt a staggering blow. Until the
moment she had not herself realized how strongly she had built upon the
outcome of this self-constructed romance of hers.

In her wildest dreams she had not considered Van Lennop's attentions to
Essie Tisdale serious or, indeed, his motives good. That Ogden Van
Lennop had entertained the remotest notion of asking Essie Tisdale to be
his wife was furthest from her thoughts. Yet there it was in black and
white, staring at her in words which burned themselves upon her brain,
searing the deeper because she learned from them that her own deed had
precipitated the crisis.

"I wasn't sure of myself until last night," Van Lennop wrote, "but that
creature's disgraceful act left me in no doubt. If I had been sure of
_you_, Essie Tisdale, I would have put my arm about you then and there
and told that braying crowd that any indignity offered you was offered
to my future wife.

"But I was not sure, I am not sure now, and only business of the utmost
urgency could take me away from you in this state of uncertainty. If you
want me to come back won't you send me a telegram telling me so to the
address I am giving below? Just a word, Essie Tisdale, to let me know
that you care a little bit, that your sweet friendship holds something
more for me