ere was evidently an unusual
commotion among the servants; and as he entered, Connie's nurse came to
meet him with a white and startled face.

"Have you seen Mrs. Adams?" she asked hastily. "She separated from me in
a shop and though I searched for her for hours, I could not find her."

For a breathless pause he stared at her in bewildered horror; then his
eyes fell upon a note lying conspicuously on the hall table, and he took
it up and tore it open before he answered. The words on the paper were
few, and after reading them, he folded the sheet again and replaced it
in the envelope. For an instant longer he still hesitated, swallowing
down the sensation of dryness in his throat.

"She will not come back to-night," he said quietly at last; "she has
gone away for a few days."

Then turning from the vacant curiosity in the assembled faces, he went
into his study and shut himself alone in the room in which the memory of
his dead child still lived.

CHAPTER VIII

"THE SMALL OLD PATH"

"Her letters of course gave her away," observed Gerty thoughtfully, as
she smoothed her long glove over her arm and looked at Laura with the
brilliant cynicism which belonged to her conspicuous loveliness, "Arnold
says it is always the woman's letters, and I'm sure he ought to know."

"Why ought he to know?" asked Laura, turning with an impatient movement
from the desk at which she sat. Her gaze hung on the soft white creases
of kid that encircled Gerty's arm, but there was an abstraction in her
look which put her friend at a chilling distance.

Gerty laughed. "Oh, I mean he's a man of the world and they always know
things."

For an instant Laura did not respond, and during the brief silence her
eyes were lifted from Gerty's arm to Gerty's face. "I sometimes think
his worldliness is only a big bluff," she said at last.

"Well, I wouldn't trust his bluff too much, that's all," retorted Gerty.

A smothered indignation showed for a moment in Laura's glance. "But how
do you know so much about him?" she demanded.

"I?--oh, I've had my fancy for him, who hasn't? He's like one of those
eclair vanille one gets at Sherry's--they look substantial enough on
the surface, but when one sticks in the fork there's nothing there but
froth. He's really quite all right, you know, so long as you don't stick
in the fork."

"But I thought you liked him!" protested Laura, pushing back her chair
and rising angrily to her feet.

"I do--I lov