en he had met and talked with Marcia Oldham. Marcia! What a charming
name! It was certainly a tremendous piece of luck that he had discovered
it. Of course, he had been disturbed by Penfield's revelations and
innuendoes. No one who took an interest in Miss Oldham could fail to be
so. Nevertheless, Penfield's statements should always be thoroughly
discounted. That was understood.

Robert mechanically lighted another cigarette, still deep in thought.
Penfield had spoken of the Oldham family fortunes. "Nothing left," he had
asserted, and yet they continued a manner of life which involved large
expenditures. How could one account with some show of probability for
these circumstances?

A number of hypotheses flashed through his brain. Could it not be
possible that this strong, self-reliant girl might have been aware of
certain resources of her father's; or might not some old friend greatly
indebted to the father have come forward in the hour of need? That was
not so incredible. Only, only, and this question recurred to him with an
insistence diabolical and mocking. Why should a woman, young, beautiful,
luxurious to the point of extravagance, preserve these mysteries? Aye,
there was the rub.

And as he sat there in the fire-light, alone with his disturbing
meditations, trying to find some solution of this haunting puzzle, he
felt more strongly than ever the spell of her presence. He did not wish
to throw it off, he would not have been able to do so if he willed. It
seemed to him that he had but to lift his eyes to see her standing there
in her black gown, the butterflies shining in the fire-light. Again he
looked into her sweet eyes, and he knew that from his soul he believed in
her. That whatever circumstances entangled her they were not of her
choosing, and that whatever mysteries enmeshed her the web was not of her
weaving.

CHAPTER V

Some business matters connected with his profession occupied the greater
part of Hayden's time for the next day or so; but in his first moments of
leisure, he hastened to look up Kitty Hampton.

About five o'clock of a raw winter afternoon, he stopped at her house,
intending under a pretense of a craving for hot tea to win Kitty to
speech of her friend Marcia. Well-simulated shivers, a reference to the
biting air, would secure his cousin's solicitude, then, at perhaps the
third cup, he would in a spontaneous burst of confidence confess to a
more than passing interest. This wou