abroad at once and that, as he would be sailing in the early
morning, he would have to leave affairs once more in her charge. There
were some words of praise for her astuteness in the management of his
business when he had been away at other times, a few directions
concerning things he would like her to do or to leave undone, a brief
regret that he should have to leave just now when it was most
important for him to be on hand, and the hope that he would not be
gone more than three or four weeks at most. But there was neither
indication of where, in that large section of the world covered by
"abroad," he might be reached by letter or cable, nor mention of which
one of the several steamers sailing that day would bear him to his
unnamed destination.

Henrietta put the letter down with a sigh of dismay. "It is too bad,
too bad!" she exclaimed. "Just when everything is going nicely and he
is doing wonderful work! Now things will begin to tangle up again and
people will get impatient, and he will lose a lot of money. Well, I'll
have to do the best I can until he comes back."

But notwithstanding her devotion to her employer's interests and the
deep and genuine pleasure she felt in seeing them advance and in
knowing that she was helping to put them forward--the delight of any
honest worker in doing well and successfully the thing that he
undertakes to do--she soon began to be conscious of a sense of relief
at being rid for even a little while of Brand's physical presence.
After his violent outburst against Mrs. Fenlow, Henrietta had felt
her repugnance increase until it amounted to positive aversion. She
did not know how great had been the nervous strain of trying
constantly to suppress and ignore this feeling until she was relieved
of it by his absence.

"I wonder," she said to herself on her way home a few days later, "if
I can endure it long enough after he returns to get entirely rid of
that mortgage. Well, I'll have to wait until he does return, anyway,
and then I ought to give him, I suppose, two or three weeks' notice.
Perhaps, when he comes home this time, he'll be more as he used to be
and it won't be so difficult. I'll wait until then before I decide."

As she came to this conclusion she was entering the ticket gate of the
ferry waiting room and, lifting her eyes from the dropping of her
ticket in the box, she saw a young man of goodly figure, dressed in a
loose fitting suit of gray, advancing toward her and lift