plaint."

"I don't know what I expected," confessed Georgiana rather faintly; "but
I don't think I expected that. I'm very thankful. I'll come in and slip
upstairs. Thank you for coming down."

She would stay for no more; it seemed to her that she could bear no
further explanations to-night. As if he understood her, Mr. Jefferson
was silent as he followed her in, bolted the heavy door, and took from
her the handbag she carried. He deposited this at the door of her room
upstairs, and spoke under his breath in the darkness relieved only by
the rays which shone from the open door of his own room at the front of
the hall:

"Good-night--and welcome back!"

It was almost daylight when she fell asleep, and she wakened again at
the first sound of Mrs. Perkins's footsteps in the kitchen below her.
She dressed slowly, her heart heavy with the sense of having made a
probably needless sacrifice. With the waking in the familiar old room,
all the realization of that which she had lost had come heavily upon
her. Why was not the sunlight pouring in through portholes, bearing the
refreshing breezes from the sea, instead of beating in over the hot tin
roof of the ell upon which her windows looked? Was it merely as Aunt
Olivia had warned her, the hysteria of the inexperienced traveler? Why
had she not at least accepted Miles Channing's eminently reasonable
suggestion that she make the voyage, giving her emotions time to cool?
At the longest, if she made an immediate return, she would have been
absent but little more than a fortnight.

But she dressed with unusual care none the less, and when she descended
the back stairs she was looking as fresh and trim as ever in her life.
She encountered the good Mrs. Perkins in the kitchen and had it out with
her, receiving the first encouragement she had felt that somebody would
think her rational in her return.

"Well, I must say," declared that lady, standing still, as if she had
been struck, in an attitude of astonishment, "while I'm more than sorry
for you to lose your trip, Georgie, I shall feel safer now you're back.
Your father cert'nly does look awful peaked to me and kind of weak-like,
more so than I ever noticed before. Perhaps it's just because I felt the
responsibility settlin' down on my shoulders the minute you was out of
the house. And I guess he was goin' to miss you pretty awful much;
though, of course, he wouldn't say so."

Georgiana took in her father's tray when it was rea