went immediately to
her room. The "Automobile Girls" were going out to a theater party, which
was being given in their honor by their old friends, Mrs. Post and Hugh.
Harriet sent word she would have to be excused. When Ruth put her head
into Harriet's room to say good-bye, just before she started for the
theater, she thought she heard her cousin crying.

"Harriet, dear, do let me stay with you," Ruth pleaded. "I am afraid you
are feeling worse than you will let us know."

But Harriet insisted that she desired only to be left alone. Feeling
strangely unhappy about her cousin, Ruth, at last joined the
theater party.

Mr. Hamlin did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he
had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She
had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled
about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen
the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin
feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with
Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were in the least ill.

So it was with unusual gentleness that he tapped lightly on
Harriet's door.

"I am all right, Mary, thank you," Harriet replied, believing her maid
to be outside. "Go to bed whenever you please. I shall fall asleep
after a while."

Mr. Hamlin cleared his throat and Harriet started nervously. Why was her
father standing outside her door? Had he learned of her bill to her
dressmaker?

"I do not wish to disturb you, Harriet," Mr. Hamlin began awkwardly. "I
only desired to know if I could do anything for you."

"No, Father," poor Harriet replied wearily. As Mr. Hamlin turned away,
she sprang up and started to run after him. At her own door she stopped.
She heard her father's stern voice giving an order to a servant, and her
sudden resolution died within her. A few moments later the front door
closed behind him and her opportunity had passed.

An hour afterwards, when the house was quiet and the servants nowhere
about, Harriet Hamlin slipped cautiously downstairs. She was gone only a
few minutes. But when she came back to her own room, she opened a private
drawer in her bureau and hid something in it. Harriet then threw herself
on her bed and lay for a long time with her eyes wide open, staring
straight ahead of her.

Just before midnight, when she heard the gay voices of her friends
returning from the theater, a