icularly happy evening near the piano for
Gertrude and Glover, Mr. Brock, re-entering the parlor, found the
somewhat tedious gentleman bending very low, as his daughter said
good-night, over her hand; in fact, the gentleman that had been so kind
to everybody was kissing it.

When Glover recovered his perpendicular the cold magnate of the West
End stood between the folding doors looking directly at him. If the
owner of several trunk lines expected his look to inspire consternation
he was disappointed. Each of the lovers feared but one person in the
world; that was the other. Gertrude, with perhaps an extra touch of
dignity, put her compromised hand to her belt for her handkerchief.
Glover finished the sentence he was in the middle of--"If I am not
ordered out. Good-night."

But when Mr. Brock had turned abruptly on his heel and disappeared
between the portieres they certainly did look at one another.

"Have I got you into trouble now?" murmured Glover, penitently.
Uneasiness was apparent in her expression, but with her back to the
piano Gertrude stood steadfast.

"Not," she said, with serious tenderness, "just now. Don't you know?
It was the first, the very first, day you looked into my eyes, dear,
that you got me into trouble."

Her pathetic sweetness moved him. Then he flamed with determination.
He would take the burden on himself--would face her father at once, but
she hushed him in real alarm and said, that battle she must fight
unaided; it was after all only a little one, she whispered, after the
one she had fought with herself. But he knew she glossed over her
anxiety, for when he withdrew her eyes looked tears though they shed
none.

In the morning there were two vacancies at the breakfast table; neither
Gertrude nor her father appeared. When Glover returned to the hotel at
five o'clock the first person he saw was Mrs. Whitney. She and Marie,
with the doctor and Allen Harrison, had arrived on the first train out
of the Springs in four days, and Mrs. Whitney's greeting of Glover in
the office was disconcerting. It scarcely needed Gertrude's face at
dinner, as she tried to brave the storm that had set in, or her
reluctant admission when she saw him as she passed up to her room that
she and her father had been up nearly the whole of the night before, to
complete his depression.

Every effort he made during the evening to speak to Gertrude was balked
by some untoward circumstance, but about nine o'c