Reuben allowed his mind to drift at will in this novel, enchanted channel for a long time, until the clients outside had taken their departure, and his cigar had burned out, and his partner had sauntered in to mark by some casual talk the fact that the day was done.

What this mind shaped into dreams and desires and pictures in its musings, it would not be an easy matter to detail. The sum of the revery—or, rather, the central goal up to which every differing train of thought somehow managed to lead him—was that Kate Minster was the most beautiful, the cleverest, the dearest, the loveliest, the most to be adored and longed for, of all mortal women.

If he did not say to himself, in so many words, “I love her,” it was because the phraseology was unfamiliar to him. That eternal triplet of tender verb and soulful pronouns, which sings itself in our more accustomed hearts to music set by the stress of our present senses—now the gay carol of springtime, sure and confident; now the soft twilight song, wherein the very weariness of bliss sighs forth a blessing; now the vibrant, wooing ballad of a graver passion, with tears close underlying rapture; now, alas! the dirge of hopeless loss, with wailing chords which overwhelm like curses, smitten upon heartstrings strained to the breaking—these three little words did not occur to him. But no lover self-confessed could have dreamed more deliciously.

He had spoken with her twice now—once when she was wrapped in furs and wore a bonnet, and once in her own house, where she was dressed in a creamy white gown, with a cord and tassels about the waist. These details were tangible possessions in the treasure-house of his memory. The first time she had charmed and gratified his vague notions of what a beautiful and generous woman should be; he had been unspeakably pleased by the enthusiasm with which she threw herself into the plan for helping the poor work-girls of the town. On this second occasion she had been concerned only about the safety of her own money, and that of her family, and yet his liking for her had flared up into something very like a consuming flame. If there was a paradox here, the lawyer did not see it.

There floated across his mind now and again stray black motes of recollection that she had not seemed altogether pleased with him on this later occasion, but they passed away without staining the bright colors of his meditation. It did not matter what she had thought or said. The fact of his having been there with her, the existence of that little perfumed letter tenderly locked up in the desk before him, the breathing, smiling, dark-eyed picture of her which glowed in his brain—these were enough.

Once before—once only in his life—the personality of a woman had seized command of his thoughts. Years ago, when he was still the schoolteacher at the Burfield, he had felt himself in love with Annie Fairchild, surely the sweetest flower that all the farm-lands of Dearborn had ever produced. He had come very near revealing his heart—doubtless the girl did know well enough of his devotion—but she was in love with her cousin Seth, and Reuben had come to realize this, and so had never spoken, but had gone away to New York instead.

He could remember that for a time he was unhappy, and even so late as last autumn, after nearly four years had gone by, the mere thought that she commended her protÉgÉe, Jessica Lawton, to his kindness, had thrilled him with something of the old feeling. But now she seemed all at once to have faded away into indistinct remoteness, like the figure of some little girl he had known in his boyhood and had never seen since.

Curiously enough, the apparition of Jessica Law-ton rose and took form in his thoughts, as that of Annie Fairchild passed into the shadows of long ago. She, at least, was not a schoolgirl any more, but a full-grown woman. He could remember that the glance in her eyes when she looked at him was maturely grave and searching. She had seemed very grateful to him for calling upon her, and he liked to recall the delightful expression of surprised satisfaction which lighted up her face when she found that both Miss Minster and he would help her.

Miss Minster and himself! They two were to work together to further and fulfil this plan of Jessica’s! Oh, the charm of the thought!

Now he came to think of it, the young lady had never said a word to-day about Jessica and the plan—and, oddly enough, too, he had never once remembered it either. But then Miss Minster had other matters on her mind. She was frightened about the mortgages and the trust, and anxious to have his help to set her fears at rest.

Reuben began to wonder once more what there was really in those fears. As he pondered on this, all the latent distrust of his partner which had been growing up for weeks in his mind suddenly swelled into a great dislike. There came to him, all at once, the recollection of those mysterious and sinister words he had overheard exchanged between his partner and Tenney, and it dawned upon his slow-working consciousness that that strange talk about a “game in his own hands” had never been explained by events. Then, in an instant, he realized instinctively that here was the game.

It was at this juncture that Horace strolled into the presence of his partner. He had his hands in his trousers pockets, and a cigar between his teeth. This latter he now proceeded to light.

“Ferguson has been here again,” he said, nonchalantly, “and brought his brother with him. He can’t make up his mind whether to appeal the case or not. He’d like to try it, but the expense scares him. I told him at last that I was tired of hearing about the thing, and didn’t give a damn what he did, as long as he only shut up and gave me a rest.”

Reuben did not feel interested in the Fergusons. He looked his partner keenly, almost sternly, in the eye, and said:

“You have never mentioned to me that Mrs. Minster had put her business in your hands.”

Horace flushed a little, and returned the other’s gaze with one equally truculent.

“It didn’t seem to be necessary,” he replied, curtly. “It is private business.”

“Nothing was said about your having private business when the firm was established,” commented Reuben.

“That may be,” retorted Horace. “But you have your railroad affairs—a purely personal matter. Why shouldn’t I have an equal right?”

“I don’t say you haven’t. What I am thinking of is your secrecy in the matter. I hate to have people act in that way, as if I couldn’t be trusted.”

Horace had never heard Reuben speak in this tone before. The whole Minster business had perplexed and harassed him into a state of nervous irritability these last few weeks, and it was easy for him now to snap at provocation.

“At least I may be trusted to mind my own affairs,” he said, with cutting niceness of enunciation and a lowering scowl of the brows.

There came a little pause, for Reuben saw himself face to face with a quarrel, and shrank from precipitating it needlessly. Perhaps the rupture would be necessary, but he would do nothing to hasten it out of mere ill-temper.

“That isn’t the point,” he said at last, looking up with more calmness into the other’s face. “I simply commented on your having taken such pains to keep the whole thing from me. Why on earth should you have thought that essential?”

Horace answered with a question. “Who told you about it?” he asked, in a surly tone.

“Old ’Squire Gedney mentioned it first. Others have spoken of it since.”

“Well, what am I to understand? Do you intend to object to my keeping the business? I may tell you that it was by the special request of my clients that I undertook it alone, and, as they laid so much stress on that, it seemed to me best not to speak of it at all to you.”

“Why?”

“To be frank,” said Horace, with a cold gleam in his eye, “I didn’t imagine that it would be particularly pleasant to you to learn that the Minster ladies desired not to have you associated with their affairs. It seemed one of those things best left unsaid. However, you have it now.”

Reuben felt the disagreeable intention of his partner’s words even more than he did their bearing upon the dreams from which he had been awakened. He had by this time perfectly made up his mind about Horace, and realized that a break-up was inevitable. The conviction that this young man was dishonest carried with it, however, the suggestion that it would be wise to probe him and try to learn what he was at.

“I wish you would sit down a minute or two,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

Horace took a chair, and turned the cigar restlessly around in his teeth. He was conscious that his nerves were not quite what they should be.

“It seems to me,” pursued Reuben—“I’m speaking as an older lawyer than you, and an older man—it seems to me that to put a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage on the Minster property is a pretty big undertaking for a young man to go into on his own hook, without consulting anybody. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t think I wish to meddle. Only it seems to me, if I had been in your place, I should have moved very cautiously and taken advice.

“I did take advice,” said Horace. The discovery that Reuben knew of this mortgage filled him with uneasiness.

“Of whom? Schuyler Tenney?” asked Reuben, speaking calmly enough, but watching with all his eyes.

The chance shot went straight to the mark. Horace visibly flushed, and then turned pale.

“I decline to be catechised in this way,” he said, nervously shifting his position on the chair, and then suddenly rising. “Gedney is a damned, meddlesome, drunken old fool,” he added, with irrelevant vehemence.

“Yes, I’m afraid ‘Cal’ does drink too much,” answered Reuben, with perfect amiability of tone. He evinced no desire to continue the conversation, and Horace, after standing for an uncertain moment or two in the doorway, went out and put on his overcoat. Then he came back again.

“Am I to take it that you object to my continuing to act as attorney for these ladies?” he asked from the threshold of the outer room, his voice shaking a little in spite of itself.

“I don’t think I have said that,” replied Reuben.

“No, you haven’t said it,” commented the other.

“To tell the truth, I haven’t quite cleared up in my own mind just what I do object to, or how much,” said Reuben, relighting his cigar, and contemplating his boots crossed on the desk-top. “We’ll talk of this again.”

“As you like,” muttered young Mr. Boyce. Then he turned, and went away without saying good-night. The outer door slammed behind him.

Twilight began to close in upon the winter’s day, but Reuben still sat in meditation. He had parted with his colleague in anger, and it was evident enough that the office family was to be broken up; but he gave scarcely a thought to these things. His mind, in fact, seemed by preference to dwell chiefly upon the large twisted silken cord which girdled the waist of that wonderful young woman, and the tasselled ends of which hung against the white front of her gown like the beads of a nun. Many variant thoughts about her affairs, about her future, rose in his mind and pleasantly excited it, but they all in turn merged vaguely into fancies circling around that glossy rope and weaving themselves into its strands.

It was very near tea-time, and darkness had established itself for the night in the offices, before Reuben’s vagrant musings prompted him to action. Upon the spur of the moment, he all at once put down his feet, lighted the gas over his desk, took out the perfumed letter from its consecrated resting-place, and began hurriedly to write a reply to it. He had suddenly realized that the memorable interview that afternoon had been, from her point of view, inconclusive.

Five times he worked his way down nearly to the bottom of the page, and then tore up the sheet. At first he was too expansive; then the contrasted fault of over-reticence jarred upon him. At last he constructed this letter, which obtained a reluctant approval from his critical sense, though it seemed to his heart a pitifully gagged and blindfolded missive:

Dear Miss Minster: Unfortunately, I was unable this afternoon to see my way to helping you upon the lines which you suggested. I am afraid that this disappointed you.

Matters have assumed a somewhat different aspect since our talk. By the time that you have mastered the details of what you had on your mind, I may be in a position to consult with you freely upon the whole subject.

I want you to believe that I am very anxious to be of assistance to you, in this as in all other things.

Faithfully yours,

Reuben TRacy.

Reuben locked up the keepsake note again, fondly entertaining the idea as he did so that soon there might be others to bear it company. Then he closed the offices, went down upon the street, and told the first idle boy he met that he could earn fifty cents by carrying a letter at once to the home of the Minsters. The money would be his when he returned to the Dearborn House.

“Will there be any answer?” asked the boy.

This opened up a new idea to the lawyer. “You might wait and see,” he said.

But the messenger came back in a depressingly short space of time, with the word that no answer was required.

He had hurried both ways with a stem concentration of purpose, and now he dashed off once more in an even more strenuous face against time with the half-dollar clutched securely inside his mitten. The Great Occidental Minstrel Combination was in town, and the boy leaped over snowbanks, and slid furiously across slippery places, in the earnestness of his intention not to miss one single joke.

The big man whom he left went wearily up the stairs to his room, and walked therein for aimless hours, and almost scowled as he shook his head at the waitress who came up to remind him that he had had no supper.

The two Minster sisters had read Reuben’s note together, in the seclusion of their own sitting-room. They had previously discussed the fact of his refusal to assist them—for so it translated itself in Kate’s account of the interview—and had viewed it with almost displeasure.

Ethel was, however, disposed to relent when the letter came.

“At least it might be well to write him a polite note,” she said, “thanking him, and saying that circumstances might arise under which you would be glad to—to avail yourself, and so on.”

“I don’t think I shall write at all,” Kate replied, glancing over the lawyer’s missive again. “He took no interest in the thing whatever. And you see how even now he infers that ‘the lines I suggested’ were dishonorable.”

“I didn’t see that, Kate.”

“Here it is. ‘He was unable to see his way,’ and that sort of thing. And he said himself that the business all seemed regular enough, so far as he could see.—Say that there is no answer,” she added to the maid at the door.

The two girls sat in silence for a moment in the soft, cosey light between the fire-place and the lace-shaded lamp. Then Ethel spoke again:

“And you really didn’t like him, Kate? You know you were so enthusiastic about him, that day you came back from the milliner’s shop. I never heard you have so much to say about any other man before.”

“That was different,” mused the other. Her voice grew even less kindly, and the words came swifter as she went on. “Then it was a question of helping the Lawton girl. He was quite excited about that. He didn’t hum and haw, and talk about ‘the lines suggested’ to him, then. He could ‘see his way’ very clearly indeed. Oh, yes, with entire clearness! And I was childish enough to be taken in by it all. I am vexed with myself when I think of it.”

“Are you sure you are being quite fair, Kate?” pale Ethel asked, putting her hand caressingly on the sister’s knee. “Read the letter again, dear. He says he wants to help you; and he hints, too, that something has happened, or is going to happen, to make him free in the matter. How can we tell what that something is, or how he felt himself bound before? It seems to me that we oughtn’t to leap at the idea of his being unfriendly. I am sure that you believed him to be a wholly good man before. Why assume all at once now that he is not, just because—Men don’t change from good to bad like that.”

“Ah, but was he good before, or did we only think so?”

Ethel went on: “Surely, he knows more about business than we do. And if he was unable to help you, it must have been for some real reason.”

“That is it! I should like to be helped first, and let reasons come afterward.” The girl’s dark eyes flashed with an imperious light. “What kind of a hero is it who, when you cry for assistance, calmly says: ‘Upon the lines you suggest I do not see my way’? It is high time the books about chivalry were burned, if ‘that’ is the modern man.”

“But you did not cry to a hero for assistance. You merely asked the advice of a lawyer about a mortgage—-if mamma is right about its being a mortgage.”

“It is the same thing,” said Kate, pushing the hassock impatiently with her foot.. “Whether the distressed maiden falls into the water or into debt, the principle is precisely the same.”

“He couldn’t do what you asked, because it would be unfair to his partner. Now, isn’t that it exactly? And wasn’t that honorable? Now, be frank, Kate.”

“The partner would have gone into anything headlong, asking no questions, raising no objections, if I had so much ais lifted my finger. He never would have given, partner a thought.”

Kate, confided this answer to the firelight. She was conscious of a desire just now not to meet her sister’s glance.

“And you like the man without scruples better than the man with them?”

“At least, he is more interesting,” the elder girl said, still with her eyes on the burning logs.

Ethel waited a little for some additional hint as to her sister’s state of mind. When the silence had begun to make itself felt, she said:

“Kate Minster, you don’t mean one word of what you are saying.”

“Ah, but I do.”

“No; listen to me. You really in your heart respect Mr. Tracy very much for his action to-day.”

“For being so much less eager to help me than he was to help the milliner?”

“No; for not being willing to help even you by doing an unfair thing.”

“Well—if you like—respect, yes. But so one respects John Knox, and Increase Mather, and St. Simon What’s-his-name on top of the pillar—all the disagreeable people, in fact. But it isn’t respect that makes the world go round. There is such a thing as caring too much for respect, and too little for warmth of feeling, and generous impulses, and—and so on.”

“You’re a queer girl, Kate,” was all Ethel could think to say.

This time the silence maintained itself so long that the snapping of sparks on the hearth, and even the rushing suction of air in the lamp-flame, grew to be obvious noises. At last Ethel slid softly from the couch to the carpet, and nestled her head against her sister’s waist. Kate put her arm tenderly over the girl’s shoulder, and drew her closer to her, and the silence had become vocal with affectionate mur-murings to them both. It was the younger sister who finally spoke:

“You won’t do anything rash, Kate? Nothing without talking it over with me?” she pleaded, almost sadly.

Kate bent over and kissed her twice, thrice, on the forehead, and stroked the silken hair upon this forehead caressingly. Her own eyes glistened with the beginnings of tears before she made answer, rising as she spoke, and striving to import into her voice the accent of gayety:

“As if I ever dreamed of doing anything at all without asking you! And please, puss, may I go to bed now?”