when he will be back?"

"Perhaps in half an hour. Perhaps in an hour. I cannot say."

She mused disappointedly. "I could hardly wait. Would you be good enough
to give him a message for me?"

"Very well."

"Well--just tell him, please, that if he can make it convenient, we'd
like the article about the reformatory to go in to-morrow, or the next
day, anyway. He'll understand perfectly; I have talked it all over with
him. The only point was as to when the article would have the most
effect, and we think the time has come now."

"You would like an article written about a reformatory for to-morrow's
_Post_ or next day's. Very well."

"Thank you so much for telling him. Good-afternoon."

"_You_ would like," the young man repeated--"but one moment, if you
please. You have omitted to inform me who _you_ are."

To his surprise the lady turned round with a gay laugh. Sharlee had
supposed that Mr. Queed, having been offended by her, was deliberately
cutting her. That her identity had literally dropped cleanly from his
mind struck her as both much better and decidedly more amusing.

"Don't you remember me?" she reminded him once again, laughing full at
him from the threshhold. "My dog knocked you over in the street one
day--surely you remember the pleasure-dog?--and then that night I gave
you your supper at Mrs. Paynter's and afterwards collected twenty
dollars from you for back board. I am Mrs. Paynter's niece and my name
is Charlotte Weyland."

Weyland?... Weyland? Oho! So this was the girl--sure enough--that Henry
G. Surface had stripped of her fortune. Well, well!

"Ah, yes, I recall you now."

She thought there was an inimical note in his voice, and to pay him for
it, she said with a final smiling nod: "Oh, I am _so_ pleased!"

Her little sarcasm passed miles over his head. She had touched the
spring of the automatic card-index system known as his memory and the
ingenious machinery worked on. Presently it pushed out and laid before
him the complete record, neatly ticketed and arranged, the full dossier,
of all that had passed between him and the girl. But she was nearly
through the door before he had decided to say:

"I had another letter from my father last night."

"Oh!" she said, turning at once--"_Did_ you!"

He nodded, gloomily. "However, there was not a cent of money in it."

If he had racked his brains for a subject calculated to detain
her--which we may rely upon it that he did not do--he could not