down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.

"I'll take him down town in the Elevated," he said, as he put her into
the carriage. "The first round's a draw."

She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands.
Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent
not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got so
far as to take down the receiver. But when she reflected, it seemed an
impossible thing to do. At four o'clock she herself was called to the
telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard's office, who
informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on
business, and would not be home that night.

"Didn't he say where he was going?" asked Honora.

"He didn't even tell me, Mrs. Spence," Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam
doesn't know."

"Oh, dear," said Honora, "I hope he realizes that people are coming for
dinner to-morrow evening."

"I'm positive, from what he said, that he'll be back some time
to-morrow," Cray reassured her.

She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own
dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable
frame of mind. The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away,
and she slept peacefully. In the morning, however; she found on her
breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.

Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not
mentioned the house. He had written from a New York club, asking her to
lunch with him at Delmonico's that day and drive home in the motor. No
answer was required: if she did not appear at one o'clock, he would know
she couldn't come.

Honora took the eleven o'clock train, which gave her an hour after she
arrived in New York to do as she pleased. Her first idea, as she stood
for a moment amidst the clamour of the traffic in front of the ferry
house, was to call on Mrs. Holt at that lady's hotel; and then she
remembered that the Charities Conference began at eleven, and decided to
pay a visit to Madame Dumond, who made a specialty of importing novelties
in dress. Her costume for the prospective excursion in the automobile had
cost Honora some thought that morning. As the day was cool, she had
brought along an ulster that was irreproachable. But how about the hat
and veil?

Madame Dumond was enchanted. She had them both,--she had landed with them
only last week. She tried them on Hono