raction upon
Crane. Disgust, he thought, was all he now felt. One did not, after all,
as he told himself, enter into competition with one's own butler.

He went quietly away, ordered a horse and went for a long ride. A man
not very easily moved emotionally, he had never experienced the
sensation of jealousy, and he now supposed himself to have reached as
calm a judgment as any in his life. Everything he had ever heard to
Jane-Ellen's discredit, every intimation of Tucker's, every sneer of
Mrs. Falkener's, came back to him now. He would like to have sent for
her and in the most scathing terms told her what he thought of her--an
interview which he imagined as very different from his former reproof.
But he decided it would be simpler and more dignified never to notice
her in any way again. On this decision he at last turned his horse's
head homeward.

Smithfield let him in, as calm and imperturbable as ever.

"Your afternoon been satisfactory, Smithfield?" inquired his employer.

Smithfield stared.

"I beg pardon, sir?"

"Have you succeeded in finding a boy to replace Brindlebury?"

The butler's face cleared.

"Oh, yes, I believe I have--not a boy, exactly, quite an elderly man,
but one who promises to do, sir."

"Good." Crane turned away, but the man followed him.

"Miss Falkener asked me to tell you when you came in, sir, that she
would be glad of a word with you. She's in your office."

Crane stood absolutely still for a second or two, and as he stood, his
jaw slowly set, as he took a resolution. Then he opened the door of his
office and went in.

Two personalities sometimes advance to a meeting with intentions as
opposite as those of two trains on a single track. Crane and Cora were
both too much absorbed in their own aims to observe the signals of the
other.

"Cora," began Crane, with all the solemnity of which the two syllables
were capable.

"Oh, Burton," cried the girl, "why did you leave Mr. Eliot's like that?
It has worried me so much. Did anything happen to annoy you? What was
it?"

"I sent the car right back for you."

"It wasn't the car I wanted."

Crane began at once to feel guilty, the form of egotism hardest to
eradicate from the human heart.

"I'm sorry if I seemed rude, my dear Cora. I thought you were settled
and content with Lefferts. I did not suppose any one would notice--"

"Your absence? Oh, Burt!"

He became aware of a suppressed excitement, an imminent outburst of some