of her
brow, tucked her letter into her bosom, and went down to meet the early
morning caller.

Mr. Brookes Ormsby, club-man, gentleman of athletic leisure, and inheritor
of the Ormsby millions, was pacing back and forth before the handful of
fire in the drawing-room grate when she entered.

"You don't deserve to have a collie sheep-dog friend," he protested
reproachfully. "How was I to know that you were going away?"

Another time Elinor might have felt that she owed him an explanation, but
just now she was careful, and troubled about the packing.

"How was I to know you didn't know?" she retorted. "It was in the
_Transcript_."

"Well!" said Ormsby. "Things have come to a pretty pass when I have to
keep track of you through the society column. I didn't see the paper.
Dyckman brought me word last night at Vineyard Haven, and we broke a
propeller blade on the _Amphitrite_ trying to get here in time."

"I am so sorry--for the _Amphitrite_," she said. "But you are here, and in
good season. Shall I call mother and Nell?"

"No. I ran out to see if I'm in time to do your errands for you--take your
tickets, and so on."

"Oh, we shouldn't think of troubling you. James can do all those things.
And failing James, there is a very dependable young woman at the head of
this household. Haven't I 'personally conducted' the family all over
Europe?"

"James is a base hireling," said the caller, blandly. "And as for the
capable young woman: do I or do I not recollect a dark night on the German
frontier when she was glad enough to call on a sleepy fellow pilgrim to
help her wrestle with a particularly thick-headed customs officer?"

"If you do, it is not especially kind of you to remind her of it."

He looked up quickly, and the masterful soul of the man, for which the
clean-cut, square-set jaw and the athletic figure were the outward
presentments, put on a mask of deference and humility.

"You are hard with me, Elinor--always flinty and adamantine, and that
sort. Have you no soft side at all?"

She laughed.

"The sentimental young woman went out some time ago, didn't she? One can't
be an anachronism."

"I suppose not. Yet I'm always trying to make myself believe other things
about you. Don't you like to be cared for like other women?"

"I don't know; sometimes I think I should. But I have had to be the man of
the house since father died."

"I know," he said. "And it is the petty anxieties that have made you put
the