rely plain attire. Over
her hair, drawn tight down round her head, she wore one of those knitted
motor caps which were the fashion of that day. Her shoes were still wet
and a trifle muddy, her coat and skirt more than a trifle damp,
indicating that she had returned from a dash to the drug store not long
before Whitaker arrived.

A variety of impressions, these with others less significant, crowded
upon his perceptions in little more than a glance. For suddenly Nature
took her in hand; she twisted upon her side, as if to escape his regard,
and covered her face, her palms muffling deep tearing sobs while waves
of pent-up misery racked her slender little body.

Whitaker moved softly away....

Difficult, he found it, to guess what to do; more difficult still to do
nothing. His nerves were badly jangled; light-footed, he wandered
restlessly to and fro, half distracted between the storm of weeping that
beat gustily within the room and the deadly blind drum of the downpour
on the tin roof beyond the windows. Since that twilight hour in that
tawdry hotel chamber, no one has ever been able to counterfeit sorrow
and remorse to Whitaker; he listened then to the very voice of utter
Woe.

Once, pausing by the centre-table, he happened to look down. He saw a
little heap of the hotel writing-paper, together with envelopes, a pen,
a bottle of ink. Three of the envelopes were sealed and superscribed,
and two were stamped. The unstamped letter was addressed to the
Proprietor of the Commercial House.

Of the others, one was directed to a Mr. C. W. Morton in care of another
person at a number on lower Sixth Avenue, New York; and from this
Whitaker began to understand the singular manner of his introduction to
the wrong room; there's no great difference between _Morton_ and
_Morten_, especially when written carelessly.

But the third letter caused his eyes to widen considerably. It bore the
name of Thurlow Ladislas, Esq., and a Wall Street address.

Whitaker's mouth shaped a still-born whistle. He was recalling with
surprising distinctness the fragment of dialogue he had overheard at his
club the previous afternoon.

IV

MRS. WHITAKER

He lived through a long, bad quarter hour, his own tensed nerves
twanging in sympathy with the girl's sobbing--like telegraph wires
singing in a gale--his mind busy with many thoughts, thoughts strangely
new and compelling, wearing a fresh complexion that lacked altogether
the colouring