h, sir, I don't know what to say. Indeed, I am not to blame."

Miss Goodman, kind-hearted soul, was more flurried now by Carshaw's
manner than by Winifred's inexplicable disappearance.

"Blame, my good woman, who is imputing blame?" he blazed at her. "But
there's a hidden purpose, a convincing motive, in her going out and not
returning. Give me some clue, some reason. A clear thought now, the
right word from you, may save hours of useless search."

"How can I give any clues?" cried the bewildered landlady. "The dear
young creature was crying all day fit to break her heart after the lady
called--"

"The lady! What lady?"

"Your mother, sir. Didn't she tell you? Mrs. Carshaw was here the day
before yesterday, and she must have spoken very cruelly to Winifred to
make her so downcast for hours. I was that sorry for her--"

Now, Carshaw had the rare faculty--rare, that is, in men of a
happy-go-lucky temperament--of becoming a human iceberg in moments of
danger or difficulty. The blank absurdity of Miss Goodman's implied
assertion that Winifred had run away--though, indeed, running away was
uppermost in the girl's thoughts--had roused him to fiery wrath.

But the haphazard mention of his mother's visit, the coincidence of
Winifred's unexpectedly strange behavior and equally unexpected
transition to a wildly declared love, revealed some of the hidden
sources of events, and over the volcano of his soul he imposed a layer
of ice. He even smiled pleasantly as he begged Miss Goodman to dry her
eyes and be seated.

"We are at loggerheads, you see," he said, almost cheerfully. "Just let
us sit down and have a quiet talk. Tell me everything you know, and in
the order in which things happened. Tell me facts, and if you are
guessing at probabilities, tell me you are guessing. Then we shall soon
unravel the tangled threads."

Thus reassured, Miss Goodman took him through the records of the past
forty-eight hours, so far as she knew them. After the first few words he
required no explanations of his mother's presence in that middle-class
section of Manhattan. She had gone there in her stately limousine to awe
and bewilder a poor little girl--to frighten an innocent out of loving
her son and thus endangering her own grandiose projects for his future.

It was pardonable, perhaps, from a worldly woman's point of view. That
there were other aspects of it she should soon see, with a certain
definiteness, the cold outlines of which a