-room, she said, so
calmly that he had not the courage to contradict her: "Here is your
uncle Henry home from Mr. Meeks's, and he was as wet as a drowned
rat. I suppose Mr. Meeks didn't have any umbrella to lend. Old
bachelors never do have anything."

Henry sat down quietly in his allotted chair. He said nothing. It was
only when the storm had abated, when there was a clear streak of gold
low in the west, and all the wet leaves in the yard gave out green
and silver lights, when Sylvia had gone out in the kitchen to get
supper and Rose had followed her, that the two men looked at each
other.

"Does she know?" whispered Horace.

"If she does know, and has taken a notion never to let anybody know
she knows, she never will," replied Henry.

"You mean that she will never mention it even to you?"

Henry nodded. He looked relieved and scared. He was right. He
continued to work in the shop, and Sylvia never intimated to him that
she knew anything about it.

Chapter XVII

When Henry had worked in the shop before Sylvia's inheritance, he had
always given her a certain proportion of his wages and himself
defrayed their housekeeping bills. He began to do so again, and
Sylvia accepted everything without comment. Henry gradually became
sure that she did not touch a dollar of her income from her new
property for herself. One day he found on the bureau in their bedroom
a book on an Alford savings-bank, and discovered that Sylvia had
opened an account therein for Rose. Sylvia also began to give Rose
expensive gifts. When the girl remonstrated, she seemed so distressed
that there was nothing to do but accept them.

Sylvia no longer used any of Abrahama White's clothes for herself.
Instead, she begged Rose to take them, and finally induced her to
send several old gowns to her dressmaker in New York for renovation.
When Rose appeared in these gowns Sylvia's expression of worried
secrecy almost vanished.

The time went on, and it was midsummer. Horace was spending his long
vacation in East Westland. He had never done so before, and Sylvia
was not pleased by it. Day after day she told him that he did not
look well, that she thought he needed a change of air. Henry became
puzzled. One day he asked Sylvia if she did not want Mr. Allen to
stay with them any longer.

"Of course I do," she replied.

"Well, you keep asking him why he doesn't go away, and I began to
think you didn't," said Henry.

"I want him to stay," said