delved distractedly into the large bag that hung on her arm. "Where's my
list? Am I through or not?" She seemed to herself to have lived long
since her wearied entrance into that restaurant.

In her uneventful life this brief experience took deep hold on her
imagination. As she rode out to Keefe on the train that afternoon she
constructed the scenes of the story in her mind.

The weak, handsome, despairing father begging his child's forgiveness.
The dismantling of the home. The placing of Geraldine in a cheap lodging
while her father's widow shed all responsibility of her and set forth in
new raiment for green fields and pastures new.

The shabby and carelessly put on suit in which Geraldine had appeared
this morning told a tale. The girl had said she despised her looks. Her
appearance had borne out the declaration. The lovely hair had been
brushed tightly back; the old hat would have been unbecoming if it
could: all seemed to testify that if the girl could have had her way not
an element of attractiveness would have been observable in her. Miss
Upton waxed indignant as she went on to picture the probable scenes
which had frightened and disgusted the child into such an abnormal frame
of mind. The memory of Rufus Carder's gaze, as his oblique eye had
feasted upon his guest, brought the blood to Miss Mehitable's face.

"I'll find out where she is if I have to employ a detective," she
thought, setting her lips. "Now there's no use in bein' a fool," she
muttered after a little more apprehensive thought. "I shall get daffy if
I go on thinkin' about it. I'll do my accounts and see if I can take my
mind off it."

* * * * *

Meanwhile Geraldine with her escort was also on a moving train. A
creeping train it seemed to her. Rufus Carder was trying to make himself
agreeable. She strove with herself to give him credit for that. She had
not lived to be a nineteen-year-old school girl without meeting
attractive young men. Her stepmother had always kept her in the
background at times when it was impossible to eliminate her altogether,
quite, as Geraldine had said, like the stepmother of a fairy tale; but
there had been holidays with school friends and an occasional admirer;
although these cases had been rare because Geraldine, always kept on
short allowance as to money and clothes, avoided as much as possible
social affairs outside the school.

She tried now to find amusement instead of mental p