power it was so sorely to wound her with a word.

And so she sat one evening before an open fire in the library which had
been the scene of their parting. Mechanically she turned the pages of a
novel, but her mind was elsewhere, and her eyes lingered upon the
details of the room.

"He stood there," she mused, "and I here--and then--those awful words.
And, oh! the look in his eyes that day as the portieres closed between
us--and he was gone. Where?"

Somehow the idea obsessed her that he had gone to sea. She pictured him
big and strong and brave, battling before the mast on some wallowing,
storm-hectored trading ship outbound, bearing him away into the
melting-pot of strange world-ways.

Would he come clean through the moil, winning honor and his place among
men? And thus would he some day return--to _her_? Or would the sea
claim him for her own, roughen him, and buffet him about through the
long years among queer Far Eastern hell-ports where, jostling shoulder
to shoulder with brutish men and the women who do not care, he would
drink deep and laugh loud among the flesh-pots of society's discards?

The uncertainty was terrible to the girl, and she forced her thoughts
into the one channel in which there was a ray of comfort.

"At least," she murmured, "he has ceased to be a menace to Charlie."

"Mr. Hiram Carmody, miss."

The old manservant who had been with the Mantons always, stood framed
in the inverted V of the parted portieres.

Ethel started. Why had he called? During the lifetime of her father the
elder Carmody had been a frequent visitor in the Manton home.

Was it about Bill? Was he sick? Had there been an accident, and was he
hurt--possibly dead? There was an icy grip at her heart, though her
voice was quite firm as she replied:

"I will see Mr. Carmody at once, Craddon."

As the man silently withdrew from the doorway a new thought came to
her.

Could it be that Bill was still in New York? That his going away had
been an empty threat? And was he now trying to bring about a
reconciliation through the medium of his father? How she could despise
him for that!

Her lips thinned, and there was a hint of formality in her greeting as
she offered her hand to the tall, gray-haired man who advanced toward
her.

"Well, well! Miss Ethel," he began, "all alone with a book and a cozy
fire. That is what I call solid comfort." He crossed the room and
extended his hands to the blaze.

"It is a long time sinc