on Edward.
It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his
heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish
the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much
better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to
prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it.
Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success.

"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of
the progress we are making."

And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this
time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer
nodded to his visitors in dismissal.

It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this
interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor
virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or
saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with
its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other
young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust
officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young
American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview
in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon
the trust company's ward.

She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer
did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with
solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to
summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the
great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness
and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed
to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton
in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square
into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,--

"It's a pretty place."

"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day
had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make.

"That trust place," Adelle explained.

"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that
"pretty is as pretty does."

It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had
seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade Schoo