bank. Jamie grew churlish, as was the poor fellow's manner when he
could not be kind, and tried even to carry it off jauntily, as if St.
Clair were bettering himself. Old Mr. Bowdoin's penetration went
behind that, or he might have gone off in a huff. As it was, he half
suspected the truth, and forbore to question Jamie further.

But it was harder still for the poor old clerk when he went home to
Mercedes. For it was St. Clair who had sulked and refused to stay in
Boston. He had hinted to his wife that it was due to Jamie's jealousy
that he had lost his place at the bank. Mercedes did not believe
this; but she had thought that Jamie, with his influence, might have
kept him there. More, she had herself, and secretly, gone to the
counting-room to see old Mr. Bowdoin, as she had done once before when
a child, and asked that St. Clair might be taken back. "Do you know
why he lost the place?"

She did not. Perhaps he had been irregular in his attendance; she
knew, too, that he had been going to some horse-races.

"Jamie has not asked me to have him taken back," said Mr. Bowdoin.

And she had returned, angry as only a loving woman can be, to reproach
poor Jamie. But he would never tell her of her husband's theft. St.
Clair was sharp enough to see this. Jamie had settled the Worcester
Square house on Mercedes when they were married; and now St. Clair got
her to urge Jamie to sell it and let him invest the money in a
business opening he had found in New York with some friends;
stock-brokerage he said it was. This poor Jamie refused to do, and
Mercedes forgave him not. But St. Clair insisted still on going.
Perhaps he boasted to his New York friends of his banking experience;
it was true that he had got some sort of an opening, with two young
men of sporting tastes whom he had met.

Preparations for departure were made. The furniture was being taken
out, and stored or sold; and each piece, as it was carried down the
stairs, brought a pang to Jamie's heart. The house was offered for
sale; Jamie drew up the advertisement in tears. He did not venture to
sit with them now of evenings; it was Jamie, of the three, who had the
guilty feeling.

The evening before their going came. St. Clair was out at a farewell
dinner, "tendered him," as he proudly announced, by his friends.
Jamie, as he passed her door, heard Mercedes crying. He could not bear
it; he went in.

"My darling, do not cry," the old man whispered. "Is it because you