she was watching his design for the
capitol building take form beneath his fingers, thinking it more
beautiful than anything he had done before. Once she had told him,
laughingly, that she believed the fairies must come in the night and
touch his pencil with magic, else it would not be possible for him to
put upon paper so rapidly a thing so lovely.

Only yesterday he had shown her the finished cartoon for the front
elevation and with a catch of her breath she had exclaimed, "Oh, Mr.
Brand, it is exquisite! I don't know why it is so beautiful, for it
looks simple, but, somehow, it seems exactly right."

And he had nodded and smiled in a pleased way and said:

"Yes, that's just it--that's what I wanted to do. It's all in the
proportions, and I think, for the first time in my life, I have got
them just right."

As she recalled the conversation an automobile whizzed past her,
slowed down and returned, and she saw Mrs. Fenlow leaning out and
calling to her:

"I thought it was you, Miss Marne! Waiting for a trolley, aren't you?
Well, don't wait, jump in with me. I'm going to the city and I'll take
you right to your office."

Henrietta had met Mrs. Fenlow a number of times during the
long-drawn-out time when the architect was endeavoring to meet her
wishes with a design for the country house she had determined to build
up the Hudson. She had found the elder woman's open speech and breezy
manners amusing, but she had also conceived liking and respect for the
sincerity and warm-heartedness that were evident underneath a rather
brusque and erratic exterior.

She had been pleased and touched also by the hearty affection and
comradeship between Mrs. Fenlow and her only son, Mark Fenlow, her
eldest child. Henrietta had met the young man several times in her
employer's office and also at his theatre party and house-warming the
previous autumn. She knew that Mark had been graduated from college
the previous spring and afterwards had been taken into a trust company
in which his father was a stock-holder and director and that his
mother, who was very proud of him, expected him to climb the ladder
rapidly and become an important figure in big financial operations.
Henrietta had found him a debonair youth, full of gay humor and
high spirits and having, apparently, much of the same kind of
good-heartedness and sincerity which she admired in his mother.

"Have you seen the morning paper?" was Mrs. Fenlow's first remark, as
Henri