almost microscopic income; and from which
bleak and distant land of second-cousindom she came in glad and
proud obedience to fill an occasional vacant place at one of Mrs. De
Peyster's second-best dinner parties.

She had arrived but the moment before to bid her exalted cousin adieu
and wish her _bon-voyage_, and was now silently gazing in unenvious
admiration at the jewels Mrs. De Peyster was transferring to their
traveling-cases--with never a guess that perturbation might exist
beneath her kinswoman's composed exterior. As a matter of fact, under
the trying circumstances which confronted Mrs. De Peyster, any other
household would have been in confusion, any lesser woman might have
been headed toward hysteria. But centuries of having had its own will
had established the De Peyster habit of believing that things would
eventuate according to the De Peyster wish; it was not in the De
Peyster blood to give way. And yet, though self-control might restrain
worry from the surface, it could not banish it from the private
chambers of her being.

Mrs. De Peyster glanced at the open door of her
bedroom--hesitated--then called: "Miss Gardner!"

A trim and pretty girl stepped in. "Yes, Mrs. De Peyster."

"Will you please call up Judge Harvey's office once more, and inquire
if there is any news about my son. And ask when Judge Harvey will be
here."

Miss Gardner crossed to Mrs. De Peyster's desk and took up the
telephone.

"Why, Cousin Caroline, has Jack--"

"One moment, Olivetta,"--motioning toward the telephone,--"until Miss
Gardner is through."

They sat silent until the receiver was hung up. Mrs. De Peyster strove
to keep anxiety from her voice.

"Well, Miss Gardner,--any trace of my son yet?"

"They have learned nothing whatever."

"And--and Judge Harvey? When will he be here?"

"His office said he was at a meeting of the directors of the New York
and New England Railroad, and that he was coming here straight after
the meeting."

"Thank you, Miss Gardner. You may now go on with the packing. I'll
have the jewels ready very shortly, and Matilda will be in to help you
as soon as she is through arranging with the servants."

"Why, Cousin Caroline, what is it about Jack?" burst out Olivetta with
an excited flutter after Miss Gardner had gone into the bedroom. "I
hadn't heard anything of it before! Has--has anything happened to
him?"

Olivetta, an intimate, a relative, and a worshipful inferior, was one
of the