e morning--it was in September-she prepared for a journey to the
city. This little trip, which thousands of people made daily, took on
for her the air of an adventure. She had been immured so long that it
seemed a great undertaking. And when she bade good-by to the boy for the
day she hugged him and kissed him again and again, as if it were to
be an eternal farewell. To her cousin were given the most explicit
directions for his care, and after she had started for the train she
returned to give further injunctions. So she told herself, but it was
really for one more look at the boy.

But on the whole there was a certain exhilaration in the preparation and
the going, and her spirits rose as they had not done in months before.
Arrived in the city, she drove at once to the club Jack most frequented.
"He is not in," the porter said; "indeed, Mr. Delancy has not been here
lately."

"Is Major Fairfax in?" Edith asked.

Major Fairfax was in, and he came out immediately to her carriage. From
him she learned Jack's address, and drove to his lodging-house. The
Major was more than civil; he was disposed to be sympathetic, but he had
the tact to see that Mrs. Delancy did not wish to be questioned, nor to
talk.

"Is Mr. Delancy at home?" she asked the small boy who ran the elevator.

"No'me."

"And he did not say where he was going?"

"No'me."

"Is he not sometimes at home in the daytime?"

"No'me."

"And what time does he usually come home in the evening?"

"Don't know. After I've gone, I guess."

Edith hesitated whether she should leave a card or a note, but she
decided not to do either, and ordered the cabman to take her to Pearl
Street, to the house of Fletcher & Co.

Mr. Fletcher, the senior partner, was her cousin, the son of her
father's elder brother, and a man now past sixty years. Circumstances
had carried the families apart socially since the death of her father
and his brother, but they were on the most friendly terms, and the ties
of blood were not in any way weakened. Indeed, although Edith had seen
Gilbert Fletcher only a few times since her marriage, she felt that she
could go to him any time if she were in trouble, with the certainty of
sympathy and help. He had the reputation of the old-fashioned New York
merchants, to whom her father belonged, for integrity and conservatism.

It was to him that she went now. The great shop, or wholesale warehouse
rather, into which she entered from the narrow and