her
brilliance? To this day I do not know. I would have been content to sit
there without my pipe, without a cigarette, listening merely to the
brook-like flow of her voice and looking at the play of expression upon
her beautiful, sensitive face.

I could feel, I thought, the warmth of her hand still lingering in my
own after I had gone down the steps, and I turned my face into the night
breeze on the avenue, glad to be alive, conscious of my health, my
strength, my youth and my courage, oblivious to the traditions of the
Estabrooks and intoxicated with a longing for her personality the moment
I had left it.

Not before the next morning did the haunting thought of something queer
and strange lurking behind the Colfax home rise to cause me doubt.

"It is nonsense," I thought. "Chance events, chance words, and my own
suspicious mind have united to produce an unreality. The Judge,
naturally enough, is jealous of such a daughter. Who would not be under
the same circumstances? An old man would be beastly lonely in that
comfortable but ancient house, even if they had removed the garden
fountain with its mournful trickle. The world has no such picturesque
and abnormal situations as those which have come into my mind. And
Julianna has all that any one could ask. Above all the vital fact is
that she is no other than she!"

Perhaps for the sake of good taste I waited two days in painful
restraint before I left my office to walk around the Monument at five;
certainly my delay was not because I could pretend to foresee that a
ghastly mystery was waiting to seize me and drag me in with its unseen
tentacles.

CHAPTER II

A PLEDGE TO THE JUDGE

There is a peculiar honesty about true affection for woman. It is for
the flirtations, the light and frivolous intimacies that a man smooths
his hair, picks out his scarf, and purchases a new stick. Somehow it
seems to me that a gentleman of natural high honor will always present
his average self to the one woman. That he should be attentive is
natural, that he should be affected is repellent to my notions. Perhaps
it was for this reason that without preparation I closed my desk and
walked up to meet Julianna, as I would have walked home to my own
bachelor quarters.

She was waiting for me!

"I have been expecting you," said she, with her hand upon the dog's
grizzled head, and in that frank and simple statement there w