For she cared a great deal about Duane’s friendship; and she was very unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things unthinkable concerning her—­nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of it added to her distress and horror.

Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts—­shy and grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, lost his coolly selfish caution.

How any rumours concerning herself and him had arisen nobody could explain.  There never is any explanation.  But they always arise.

In their small but pretty house, terrible scenes had already occurred between her and her brother—­consternation, anger, and passionate denial on her part; on his, fury, threats, maudlin paroxysms of self-pity, and every attitude that drink and utter demoralisation can distort into a parody on what a brother might say and do.

To escape it she had gone to Tuxedo for a week; now, fear and foreboding had brought her back—­fear intensified at the very threshold of the city when Duane seemed to look straight at her and pass her by without recognition.  Men don’t do that, but she was too inexperienced to know it; and she hastened on with a heavy heart, found a taxi-cab to take her to the only home she had ever known, descended, and rang for admittance.

In these miserable days she had come to look for hidden meaning even in the expressionless faces of her trained servants, and now she misconstrued the respectful smile of welcome, brushed hastily past the maid who admitted her, and ran upstairs.

Except for the servants she was alone.  She rang for information concerning her brother; nobody had any.  He had not been home in a week.

Her toilet, after the journey, took her two hours or more to accomplish; it was dark at five o’clock and snowing heavily when tea was served.  She tasted it, then, unable to subdue her restlessness, went to the telephone; and after a long delay, heard the voice she tremblingly expected: 

“Is that you, Jack?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“H-how are you?”

“Not very well.”

“Have you heard anything new about certain proceedings?” she inquired tremulously.

“Yes; she’s begun them.”

“On—­on w-what grounds?”

“Not on any grounds to scare you.  It will be a Western matter.”

Her frightened sigh of relief turned her voice to a whisper: 

“Has Stuyve—­has a certain relative—­annoyed you since I’ve been away?”