ain. I'm sure he's not the kind of man we've always thought
him."

"Oh, nonsense!" Bella rejoined, breezily. "Don't be alarmed for your
handsome Felix Brand. It doesn't do him a bit of harm and I have a lot
of fun. Don't worry about me, Harry. I'm not an infant. And I don't
suppose I'll be offered any more perquisites of that sort, now that
you're going to leave him. Poor little me!"

Henrietta found her employer in a particularly trying mood the next
morning. He looked tired and worn, as though he had not slept, and
his mobile countenance, always so eloquent of his state of mind that
every changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his
soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which
seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves
in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary
noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when
she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an
alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected to see some menace take form
out of the air. To her relief he did not return to the office after
luncheon. If she had known that he was speeding in his automobile
toward her home she would have taken less comfort in her quiet
afternoon.

"Bella, dear, do you think you'd better go?" said her mother. "Harry
seems so anxious about it, and she knows him better than we do. Hadn't
you better tell you have an engagement, and then take me out for a
little walk?"

"Oh, just this one more time won't make any difference, mother! I
guess my chatter is good for him, for he always seems blue when we
start out, but by the time we come home he's in as good spirits as I
am. So it would really be unkind not to go, wouldn't it, mother?"

"Well, dear, if you think best. But I shall be anxious about you, so
please ask him to bring you back as soon as he can."

When they returned in the late afternoon Isabella caught a glimpse, as
the automobile stopped and she glanced up toward her mother's room, of
a man's figure standing beside Mrs. Marne's chair, near the window.
Brand helped her out, and then, casting a keen glance at her, with a
little laugh he took her by the arm and guided her up the path and
across the porch to the door. Fumbling with her key, she scarcely
noticed his departure and by the time she stepped inside, his machine
was disappearing down the street.

As she entered the hall she saw a man