“Why, she’s a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and conscientious in her work.  She’s very quick, too.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet’s aptitude for business.

“She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs.  You can see she comes of good stock.”  Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood.  “Her father, you know, is the gatekeeper down there.  He’s been unfortunate.”

“You don’t say—­I didn’t connect her with him.  Fine looking old man.  A friend of mine who recommended him told me he’d seen better days ....”

CHAPTER II

In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of such a disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. Claude Ditmar intended to infringe upon a fixed principle.  He had principles.  For him, as for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, the seventh commandment was only relative, yet hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity, laying down the sound doctrine that women and business would not mix:  or, as he put it to his intimates, no sensible man would fool with a girl in his office.  Hence it may be implied that Mr. Ditmar’s experiences with the opposite sex had been on a property basis.  He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea of a good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise busy and successful persons who, by reason of having married early and unwisely, are strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse chronicled in novels and the public prints.  If one may conveniently overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars.  Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this description:  a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived.  He was not inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a somewhat exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained.

He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of twelve, both somewhat large for their ages.  Amy attended the only private institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast; George continued at a public school.  The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years before her demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless aspirations to which American ladies of her type and situation seem peculiarly liable, and with a view to their ultimate realization she had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign.  Death had released Ditmar from its increasing pressure.  For his wife had