fore her, with tear-blurred eyes.
She hastily wiped her tears away, but they only fell the faster. Miss
Wharton's injustice, Jean Brent's selfishness, together with the sudden
shock of Tom's departure out of the country and out of her life, were
too much for her high-strung, sensitive nature. Dropping into the chair
before her desk, she bowed her head on the slide and wept
unrestrainedly.

Her overflow of feelings was brief, however. Given little to tears,
after her first outburst she exerted all her will power to control
herself. The girls were dropping in by ones and twos from their classes,
the maid would soon come into the living room to turn on the lights, and
at almost any moment some one might ask for her. She would not care to
be discovered in tears.

Grace picked up the rest of her mail, lying still unopened, and went
upstairs to her room with the proud determination to cry no more. She
was quite sure she would not have cried over Tom's letter had all else
been well. It was her interview with Miss Wharton that had hurt her so
cruelly. Yet, with the reading of Tom's farewell message, deep down in
her heart lurked a curiously uncomfortable sense of loss. It was as
though for the first time in her life she had actually began to miss
Tom. She had not expected fate to cut him off so sharply from her. She
knew that her refusal to marry him had been the primary cause of his
going away. Mrs. Gray would perhaps blame her. These expeditions were
dangerous to say the least. More than one naturalist had died of fever
or snakebite, or had been killed by savages. Suppose Tom were never to
come back. Grace shuddered at the bare idea of such a calamity. And he
did not intend to write to her, so she could only wonder as the days,
weeks and months went by what had befallen him. She would never know.

While she was sadly ruminating over Tom's unexpected exit from her
little world, Emma Dean's brisk step sounded outside. The door swung
open. Emma gave a soft exclamation as she saw the room in darkness.
Pressing the button at the side of the door, she flooded the room with
light, only to behold Grace standing in the middle of the floor, still
wearing her outdoor wraps, an open letter in her hand.

"Good gracious, Gracious, how you startled me! What is going on? Tell
your worthless dog of a servant, what means this studied pose in the
middle of the room in the dark? Not to mention posing in your hat and
coat. And, yes," Emma dre