al? She had heard of men who sometimes slipped out of sight
that they might plunge unhampered into debauchery, and she began to
wonder if such were the case with him, or if, perhaps, he had fallen a
victim to some secret vice. But against either of these suppositions
both her feminine instincts and her personal liking for her employer
rebelled.

"I don't see how that could be," she thought, "for he is always so
nice and refined. There is no suggestion about him of anything gross
or so--unclean. No, it can't be anything of that sort. And yet, he
seemed so nervous, and just as if he were fighting against something
with all his might--and I suppose it would be like that if he were
fighting the desire to drink or take some kind of dope. But I can't
believe it. I wonder if that Hugh Gordon could have anything to do
with it. Well, whatever the explanation, it's evident he doesn't want
people to know about his being away, and he doesn't like it to be
talked about, so the thing for me to do is to keep as still as a mouse
and not to let anybody else do any more talking than I can help."

Even at home, in her loyalty to her sense of duty, Henrietta said no
more than to make a mere mention of her employer's absence and to
reply, when her mother or sister made occasional inquiry, that he had
not yet returned.

Brand had been away almost a week when the office boy brought her a
card one morning and said the gentleman was particularly anxious to
see her. As she looked at it and read "Hugh Gordon" her heart began to
beat faster and her face flushed a sudden red.

Had he come, she wondered, to bring her news of Brand's whereabouts,
or, perhaps, tidings of some serious misfortune? The apprehensive
thought flashed through her mind that perhaps he would try, under
threat of evil to herself or her employer, to force from her some
personal or business information that he could afterward use as a
lever against the architect, and she told herself that she must be
very careful what she said to him.

She felt assured that he was there for no good purpose, and during the
moment that she waited for the boy to bring him into her room her mind
formed a swift picture of an elderly fellow, slouching and shabby,
red-nosed and unshaven, bearing all the marks of a parasitic and
dissipated life.

When she saw instead a well-groomed young man, wearing an English
looking gray suit, advancing toward her with a quick, firm step and a
self-confident a