ld it be? It
wasn't with Antonio, and it wasn't with Dr. Hilary. There was the
choice. Were there any other rival, he couldn't help knowing it. He had
sometimes suspected--no, it was hardly enough for suspicion!--he had
sometimes hoped--but it had been hardly enough for hope!--and yet
sometimes, when she gave him that dim, sidelong smile or turned to him
with the earnest, wide-open look in her greenish eyes, he had thought
that possibly--just possibly....

He didn't know what answers he made to her further remarks. A faint
memory remained with him of talking incoherently against reason, against
sentiment, against time, as, with her velvety regard resting upon him
sadly, he swung on his overcoat and hurried to take his leave.

CHAPTER XII

He hurried because inwardly he was running away from the figure he had
cut. Never had he supposed that in any one's time of need--to say
nothing of hers!--he could have proved so worthless. And he hurried
because he knew a decision one way or the other had become imperative.
And he hurried because his failure convinced him that so long as there
was a possibility that Rosie cared for him secretly he would never do
anything for Lois Willoughby. Whatever his sentiment toward the
woman-friend of his youth, he was tied and bound by the stress of a love
of which the call was primitive. He might be over-abrupt; he might
startle her; but at the worst he should escape from this unbearable
state of inactivity.

So he hurried. It had stopped snowing; the evening was now fair and
cold. As it was nearly six o'clock, his father would probably have come
home. He would make him first an offer of new terms, and he would see
Rosie afterward. His excitement was such that he knew he could neither
eat nor sleep till the questions in his heart were answered.

But on reaching his own gate he was surprised to see Mrs. Willoughby's
motor turn in at the driveway and roll up to the door. It was not that
there was anything strange in her paying his mother a call, but to-day
the circumstances were unusual. Anything might happen. Anything might
have happened already. On reaching the door he let himself in with
misgiving.

He recognized the visitor's voice at once, but there was a note in it he
had never heard before. It was a plaintive note, and rather childlike:

"Oh, Ena, _what's_ become of my money?"

His mother's inflections were as childlike as the other's, and as full
of distress. "How do I