came down from a voluntary visit to the invalid. He
watched her attack the problem by long-distance telephone. Sensations
that were new and strange and sweet assailed him as he sat near in the
living-room of his own house, seeing her at the telephone desk by the
window, hearing her voice. Her patience in the necessary delays while
connection was made with the city, her courtesy to her unseen auditors,
the smile, the occasional word she flung at him--as much as to say, of
course it's bothersome but all will soon come right!--these things
stirred in him a wistfulness and longing such as the hardy oak must feel
when the south wind touches its bare boughs with the first faint breath
of spring.

"It's all arranged--fixed--accomplished!" Sylvia reported at last.
"There's a cook coming by the afternoon train. You'll attend to meeting
her? Please tell Mrs. Bassett it's Senator Ridgefield's cook who's
available for the rest of the summer, as the family have gone abroad.
She's probably good--the agent said Mrs. Ridgefield had brought her from
Washington. Let me see! She must have Thursday afternoon off and a
chance to go to mass on Sunday. And you of course stand the railroad
fare to and from the lake; it's so nominated in the bond!"

She dismissed the whole matter with a quick gesture of her hands.

Their next interview touched again his domestic affairs. He had
telegraphed Marian to come home without eliciting a reply, and the next
day he found in a Chicago newspaper a spirited and much-beheadlined
account of the smashing of the Willings' automobile in a collision. It
seemed that they had run into Chicago for a day's shopping and had met
with this misadventure on one of the boulevards. The Willings' chauffeur
had been seriously injured. Miss Marian Bassett, definitely described as
the daughter of Morton Bassett, the well-known Indiana politician, had
been of the party. Allen Thatcher was another guest of the Willings, a
fact which added to Bassett's anger. He had never visited his hatred of
Thatcher upon Allen, whom he had regarded as a harmless boy not to be
taken seriously; but the conjunction of his daughter's name with that of
his enemy's son in a newspaper of wide circulation in Indiana greatly
enraged him. It was bound to occasion talk, and he hated publicity. The
Willings were flashy people who had begun to spend noisily the money
earned for them by an automobile patent. The indictment he drew against
Marian contained