The discerning reader will perhaps think Mr. Thomas Larcher a very dull person in not having yet put this and that together and associated the love-affair of Murray Davenport with the “romance” of Miss Florence Kenby. One might suppose that Edna Hill's friendship for Miss Kenby, and her inquisitiveness regarding Davenport, formed a sufficient pair of connecting links. But the still more discerning reader will probably judge otherwise. For Miss Hill had many friends whom she brought to Larcher's notice, and Miss Kenby did not stand alone in his observation, as she necessarily does in this narrative. Larcher, too, was not as fully in possession of the circumstances as the reader. Nor, to him, were the circumstances isolated from the thousands of others that made up his life, as they are to the reader. Edna's allusion to Miss Kenby's “romance” had been cursory; Larcher understood only that she had given up a lover to please her father. Davenport's inconstant had abandoned him because he was unlucky; Larcher had always conceived her as such a woman, and so of a different type from that embodied in Miss Kenby. To be sure, he knew now that Davenport's fickle one had a father; but so had most young women. In short, the small connecting facts had no such significance in his mind, where they were not grouped away from other facts, as they must have in these pages, where their very presence together implies inter-relation.

In his reports to Edna, a certain delicacy had made him touch lightly upon the traces of Davenport's love-affair. He may, indeed, have guessed that those traces were what she was most desirous to hear of. But a certain manly allegiance to his sex kept him reticent on that point in spite of all her questions. He did not even say to what motive Davenport ascribed the false one's fickleness; nor what was Davenport's present opinion of her. “He was thrown over by some woman whose name he never mentions; since then he has steered clear of the sex,” was what Larcher replied to Edna a hundred times, in a hundred different sets of phrases; and it was all he replied on the subject.

So matters stood until two days after the interview related in the previous chapter. At the end of that interview, Larcher had said that for the second day thereafter he was engaged; Hence he had appointed the third day for his next meeting with Davenport. The engagement for the second day was, to spend the afternoon with Edna Hill at a riding-school. Upon arriving at the flat where Edna lived under the mild protection of her easy-going aunt, he found Miss Kenby included in the arrangement. To this he did not object; Miss Kenby was kind as well as beautiful; and Larcher was not unwilling to show the tyrannical Edna that he could play the cavalier to one pretty girl as well as to another. He did not, however, manage to disturb her serenity at all during the afternoon. The three returned, very merry, to the flat, in a state of the utmost readiness for afternoon tea, for the day was cold and blowy. To make things pleasanter, Aunt Clara had finished her tea and was taking a nap. The three young people had the drawing-room, with its bright coal fire, to themselves.

Everything was trim and elegant in this flat. The clear-skinned maid who placed the tea things, and brought the muffins and cake, might have been transported that instant from Mayfair, on a magic carpet, so neat was her black dress, so spotless her white apron, cap, and cuffs, so clean her slender hands.

“What a sweet place you have, Edna,” remarked Florence Kenby, looking around.

“So you've often said before, dear. And whenever you choose to make it sweeter, for good, you've only got to move in.”

Florence laughed, but with something very like a sigh.

“What, are you willing to take boarders?” said Larcher. “If that's the case, put me down as the first applicant.”

“Our capacity for 'paying guests' is strictly limited to one person, and no gentlemen need apply. Two lumps, Flo dear?”

“Yes, please.—If only your restrictions didn't keep out poor father—”

“If only your poor father would consider your happiness instead of his own selfish plans.”

“Edna, dear! You mustn't.”

“Why mustn't I?” replied Edna, pouring tea. “Truth's truth. He's your father, but I'm your friend, and you know in your heart which of us would do more for you. You know, and he knows, that you'd be happier, and have better health, if you came to live with us. If he really loves you, why doesn't he let you come? He could see you often enough. But I know the reason; he's afraid you'd get out of his control; he has his own projects. You needn't mind my saying this before Tom Larcher; he read your father like a book the first time he ever met him.”

Larcher, in the act of swallowing some buttered muffin, instantly looked very wise and penetrative.

“I should think your father himself would be happier,” said he, “if he lived less privately and had more of men's society.”

“He's often in poor health,” replied Florence.

“In that case, there are plenty of places, half hotel, half sanatorium, where the life is as luxurious as can be.”

“I couldn't think of deserting him. Even if he—weren't altogether unselfish about me, there would always be my promise.”

“What does that matter—such a promise?” inquired Edna, between sips of tea.

“You would make one think you were perfectly unscrupulous, dear,” said Florence, smiling. “But you know as well as I, that a promise is sacred.”

“Not all promises. Are they, Tommy?”

“No, not all,” replied Larcher. “It's like this: When you make a bad promise, you inaugurate a wrong. As long as you keep that promise, you perpetuate that wrong. The only way to end the wrong, is to break the promise.”

“Bravo, Tommy! You can't get over logic like that, Florence, dear, and your promise did inaugurate a wrong—a wrong against yourself.”

“Well, then, it's allowable to wrong oneself,” said Florence.

“But not one's friends—one's true, disinterested friends. And as for that other promise of yours—that fearful promise!—you can't deny you wronged somebody by that; somebody you had no right to wrong.”

“It was a choice between him and my father,” replied Florence, in a low voice, and turning very red.

“Very well; which deserved to be sacrificed?” cried Edna, her eyes and tone showing that the subject was a heating one. “Which was likely to suffer more by the sacrifice? You know perfectly well fathers don't die in those cases, and consequently your father's hysterics must have been put on for effect. Oh, don't tell me!—it makes me wild to think of it! Your father would have been all right in a week; whereas the other man's whole life is darkened.”

“Don't say that, dear,” pleaded Florence, gently. “Men soon get over such things.”

“Not so awfully soon;—not sincere men. Their views of life are changed, for all time. And this man seems to grow more and more melancholy, if what Tom says is true.”

“What I say?” exclaimed Larcher.

The two girls looked at each other.

“Goodness! I have given it away!” cried Edna.

“More and more melancholy?” repeated Larcher. “Why, that must be Murray Davenport. Was he the—? Then you must be the—! But surely you wouldn't have given him up on account of the bad luck nonsense.”

“Bad luck nonsense?” echoed Edna, while Miss Kenby looked bewildered.

“The silly idea of some foolish people, that he carried bad luck with him,” Larcher explained, addressing Florence. “He sent you a letter about it.”

“I never got any such letter from him,” said Florence, in wonderment.

“Then you didn't know? And that had nothing to do with your giving him up?”

“Indeed it had not! Why, if I'd known about that—But the letter you speak of—when was it? I never had a letter from him after I left town. He didn't even answer when I told him we were going.”

“Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements.”

“I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried between us. I knew he couldn't be so negligent. I'd have taken pains to clear it up, if I hadn't promised my father just at that time—” She stopped, unable to control her voice longer. Her lips were quivering.

“Speaking of your father,” said Larcher, “you must have got a subsequent letter from Davenport, because he sent it registered, and the receipt came back with your father's signature.”

“No, I never got that, either,” said Florence, before the inference struck her. When it did, she gazed from one to the other with a helpless, wounded look, and blushed as if the shame were her own.

Edna Hill's eyes blazed with indignation, then softened in pity for her friend. She turned to Larcher in a very calling-to-account manner.

“Why didn't you tell me all this before?”

“I didn't think it was necessary. And besides, he never told me about the letters till the night before last.”

“And all this time that poor young man has thought Florence tossed him over because of some ridiculous notion about bad luck?”

“Well, more or less,—and the general fickleness of the sex.”

“General fick—! And you, having seen Florence, let him go on thinking so?”

“But I didn't know Miss Kenby was the lady he meant. If you'd only told me it was for her you wanted news of him—”

“Stupid, you might have guessed! But I think it's about time he had some news of her. He ought to know she wasn't actuated by any such paltry, childish motive.”

“By George, I agree with you!” cried Larcher, with a sudden energy. “If you could see the effect on the man, of that false impression, Miss Kenby! I don't mean to say that his state of mind is entirely due to that; he had causes enough before. But it needed only that to take away all consolation, to stagger his faith, to kill his interest in life.”

“Has it made him so bitter?” asked Florence, sadly.

“I shouldn't call the effect bitterness. He has too lofty a mind for strong resentment. That false impression has only brought him to the last stage of indifference. I should say it was the finishing touch to making his life a wearisome drudgery, without motive or hope.”

Florence sighed deeply.

“To think that he could believe such a thing of Florence,” put in Edna. “I'm sure I couldn't. Could you, Tom?”

“When a man's in love, he doesn't see things in their true proportions,” said Larcher, authoritatively. “He exaggerates both the favors and the rebuffs he gets, both the kindness and the coldness of the woman. If he thinks he's ill-treated, he measures the supposed cause by his sufferings. As they are so great, he thinks the woman's cruelty correspondingly great. Nobody will believe such good things of a woman as the man who loves her; but nobody will believe such bad things if matters go wrong.”

“Dear, dear, Tommy! What a lot you know about it!”

But Miss Hill's momentary sarcasm went unheeded. “So I really think, Miss Kenby, if you'll pardon me,” Larcher continued, “that Murray Davenport ought to know your true reason for giving him up. Even if matters never go any further, he ought to know that you still—h'm—feel an interest in him—still wish him well. I'm sure if he knew about your solicitude—how it was the cause of my looking him up—I can see through all that now—”

“I can never thank you enough—and Edna,” said Florence, in a tremulous voice.

“No thanks are due me,” replied Larcher, emphatically. “I value his acquaintance on its own account. But if he knew about this, knew your real motives then, and your real feelings now, even if he were never to see you again, the knowledge would have an immense effect on his life. I'm sure it would. It would restore his faith in you, in woman, in humanity. It would console him inexpressibly; would be infinitely sweet to him. It would change the color of his view of life; give him hope and strength; make a new man of him.”

Florence's eyes glistened through her tears. “I should be so glad,” she said, gently, “if—if only—you see, I promised not to hold any sort of communication with him.”

“Oh, that promise!” cried Edna. “Just think how it was obtained. And think about those letters that were stopped. If that alone doesn't release you, I wonder what!”

Florence's face clouded with humiliation at the reminder.

“Moreover,” said Larcher, “you won't be holding communication. The matter has come to my knowledge fairly enough, through Edna's lucky forgetfulness. I take it on myself to tell Davenport. I'm to meet him to-morrow, anyhow—it looks as though it had all been ordained. I really don't see how you can prevent me, Miss Kenby.”

Florence's face threw off its cloud, and her conscience its scruples, and a look of gratitude and relief, almost of sudden happiness, appeared.

“You are so good, both of you. There's nothing in the world I'd rather have than to see him made happy.”

“If you'd like to see it with your own eyes,” said Larcher, “let me send him to you for the news.”

“Oh, no! I don't mean that. He mustn't know where to find me. If he came to see me, I don't know what father would do. I've been so afraid of meeting him by chance; or of his finding out I was in New York.”

Larcher understood now why Edna had prohibited his mentioning the Kenbys to anybody. “Well,” said he, “in that case, Murray Davenport shall be made happy by me at about one o'clock to-morrow afternoon.”

“And you shall come to tea afterward and tell us all about it,” cried Edna. “Flo, you must be here for the news, if I have to go in a hansom and kidnap you.”

“I think I can come voluntarily,” said Florence, smiling through her tears.

“And let's hope this is only the beginning of matters, in spite of any silly old promise obtained by false pretences! I say, we've let our tea get cold. I must have another cup.” And Miss Hill rang for fresh hot water.

The rest of the afternoon in that drawing-room was all mirth and laughter; the innocent, sweet laughter of youth enlisted in the generous cause of love and truth against the old, old foes—mercenary design, false appearance, and mistaken duty.

Larcher had two reasons for not going to his friend before the time previously set for his call. In the first place he had already laid out his time up to that hour, and, secondly, he would not hazard the disappointment of arriving with his good news ready, and not finding his friend in. To be doubly sure, he telegraphed Davenport not to forget the appointment on any account, as he had an important disclosure to make. Full of his revelation, then, he rang the bell of his friend's lodging-house at precisely one o'clock the next day.

“I'll go right up to Mr. Davenport's room,” he said to the negro boy at the door.

“All right, sir, but I don't think you'll find Mr. Davenport up there,” replied the servant, glancing at a brown envelope on the hat-stand.

Larcher saw that it was addressed to Murray Davenport. “When did that telegram come?” he inquired.

“Last evening.”

“It must be the one I sent. And he hasn't got it yet! Do you mean he hasn't been in?”

Heavy slippered footsteps in the rear of the hall announced the coming of somebody, who proved to be a rather fat woman in a soiled wrapper, with tousled light hair, flabby face, pale eyes, and a worried but kindly look. Larcher had seen her before; she was the landlady.

“Do you know anything about Mr. Davenport?” she asked, quickly.

“No, madam, except that I was to call on him here at one o'clock.”

“Oh, then, he may be here to meet you. When did you make that engagement?”

“On Tuesday, when I was here last! Why?—What's the matter?”

“Tuesday? I was in hopes you might 'a' made it since. Mr. Davenport hasn't been home for two days!”

“Two days! Why, that's rather strange!”

“Yes, it is; because he never stayed away overnight without he either told me beforehand or sent me word. He was always so gentlemanly about saving me trouble or anxiety.”

“And this time he said nothing about it?”

“Not a word. He went out day before yesterday at nine o'clock in the morning, and that's the last we've seen or heard of him. He didn't carry any grip, or have his trunk sent for; he took nothing but a parcel wrapped in brown paper.”

“Well, I can't understand it. It's after one o'clock now—If he doesn't soon turn up—What do you think about it?”

“I don't know what to think about it. I'm afraid it's a case of mysterious disappearance—that's what I think!”