"With Miss Connie?"

"No, you foolish boy. In his trial."

"I don't know."

"What will happen if he loses?"

"The case will be appealed."

"And if he loses in the Court of Appeals?"

"It's up to Gooch to see that he doesn't lose. I only wish I was as certain of a few other things as I am of Donald Morley's innocence!"

One afternoon, a few days before the trial, Donald after oscillating between the hotel and his club and finding each equally intolerable, jumped on the car and went out to the Queeringtons. It was a cold, raw day, with a fine mist filling the air, and even the dull formality of the drab parlor seemed a relief from the gloom without.

Miss Lady started up from the piano as he entered, but Connie pulled her back:

"You shan't run off and leave us, shall she, Cousin Don? She was just going to play for Mr. Wicker to sing. Did you know he could sing?"

"Oh, yes. Wick's the Original Warbler. Do you remember our serenades on the Cane Run Road, Wick?"

"Yes," said Noah glumly.

"I forgot that you and Mr. Wicker used to know each other," Connie said curiously. "Why the Cane Run Road runs by Thornwood, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Don calmly, seizing the conversation and shoving it out of shoal water. "Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll join in the chorus."

But when the time for the chorus came Donald had forgotten his promise. He was leaning back in a corner of the sofa, his hand shading his eyes, watching Miss Lady, and wondering what trick of fate had driven her to marry John Jay Queerington. There was no man in the world whose moral worth he admired more, but Miss Lady seemed as out of place in his life as a darting, quivering humming-bird in a museum of natural history. He noticed the faint shadows about her eyes, and the wistful droop of her lips. If he could only set her free! A mad desire seized him to see her once more joyously on the wing with all her old buoyancy and daring. And yet she had walked open eyed into her cage, and he had yet to see the tiniest flutter of her wings against the bars.

On that first night of his home-coming surely he had read a welcome in her eyes! But never since by word or gesture had he reason to think that she remembered. She was gracious and elusive, and she talked to him as she talked to Decker and Gerald Ivy, only she looked at them when she talked, and she never even looked at him.

Yet she _had_ cared! He had only to recall the flashing revelation of her eyes that night in the garden to know for one transcendent moment, at least, she was his. It was the look that had sustained his faith in her through all those weary months of silence, making him cling to the belief, until he heard the truth from her own lips, that she had failed to get his letter. It was the remembrance of that look and what it had promised that rushed upon him now as he watched her.

All the reckless impulse of his boyhood, the long years of unrestraint, surged over him, urging him on to wake in her some answer to his fierce, insistent demand. She should remember the way he had loved her, she should know the way he loved her now. If there was any heart left in her she must respond in some way to his imperative need.

But her eyes kept steadily on the key-board, and her fingers unfalteringly followed the notes. Could he have known how the tears burned under her lashes, and how cold her fingers were on the keys; could he have guessed how she sat there under his steady gaze, with tense muscles and quivering nerves, calculating the minutes that must elapse before Noah's interminable verses would end, and she could escape, he might have had compassion on her.

"Sing, Cousin Don!" demanded Connie; "you are leaving it all to Mr. Wicker and me, while you sit there looking exactly as if you had lost your last friend."

"No, only my illusions, Connie."

"Where did you lose them?"

"In Singapore. All but one. I hung on to it clear around the world, only to lose it on Christmas night when I got home. Don't you feel sorry for me?"

"Not a bit," said Connie saucily. "I couldn't feel sorry for anybody as good looking as you are,--could you, Mr. Wicker? Where did Miss Lady go?"

"She said she was going to lie down, that her head ached," said Noah.

"I know what's the matter," said Connie; "she tries to keep us from seeing it, but she's all broken up over selling Thornwood."

"Thornwood!" cried Donald; "she hasn't sold it?"

"No, but it's been put up for sale. She'd die at the stake for Father. He doesn't even know about it."

"But surely there is some other way." Connie shrugged her shoulders. "I am sure I don't know. Hattie's given up music and French, and we've put Bertie in the public school, and I haven't had but one party dress this winter. But a girl doesn't have to depend on clothes to have a good time, does she, Mr. Wicker?"

That night Donald sat up late, turning things over in his mind. Once the trial was over he must go away, where he could not see Miss Lady or hear of her. He must plunge into some business that would absorb his time and attention. But before he went he must make an investment and make it at once. In order to do so, he would follow Basil Sequin's advice, and offer his bank stock for sale in the morning.

CHAPTER XXI

There was anxiety in the drab house in College Street. The second day of Donald Morley's trial had come and no decision had been reached. Every ring of the telephone, every opening of the front door brought a hurrying of feet through the hall, and an eager demand to know if there was any news.

"I'll never get my lessons!" exclaimed Hattie petulantly, collecting her scattered belongings after one of these rushes to the door. "I wish to Heaven one of my fingers was a lead pencil!"

"Why don't you wish your tongue was one, Hat, then you wouldn't have to sharpen it," suggested Connie.

"I bet Miss Lady had my pencil," went on Hattie, ignoring Connie's comment. "She's never owned a pair of scissors, or a pencil, or a shoe-buttoner since she's been here. And look at those letters on the mantel! She'll never think about mailing them."

"What are they doing with black borders?"

"She bought a job lot of paper the other day, all colors and sizes, trying to be economical. She uses the mourning ones to pay the bills."

"Yes, and I'll have to be putting little pink love letters in big blue envelopes all winter. Say, Hat, do you suppose it would be all right if I called up Mr. Wicker to ask him how the trial is going?"

"Of course not. We'll hear as soon as there is anything to hear. I wish you'd hush talking and let me study."

Connie heroically refrained from speech for five minutes, then she announced:

"Do you know, I don't believe Miss Lady likes him!"

"Who? Mr. Wicker?"

"No, you silly,--Don."

"When did you stop saying Cousin Don, pray?"

"Oh, ages ago. She's always so quiet when he comes, and she goes up- stairs the first chance she gets. I think she's changed a lot since she first came, don't you?"

"Well, I guess you'd change, too, if you had married a sick man with three children, as poor as poverty, and a cook as cross as Myrtella."

"But she has Myrtella eating out of her hand. Imagine my marrying a man as old as Father!"

"If I had to marry, I'd rather marry Father than anybody else. But I've never seen the man yet that I'd be willing to marry."

"Oh, I have! I know ten right now that I'd marry in a minute."

"Connie Queerington! Who are the others beside Gerald and Cousin Don?"

"Guess."

"Noah Wicker?"

Connie laughed. "Mr. Wicker is not as bad as he was. He must have taken chloroform and had his pompadour cut. Don says he is awfully clever."

"Anybody could be clever who took a whole day to compose each speech. I'll tell you what's the matter with Miss Lady; she is worrying herself sick over Father. Did she tell you what Doctor Wyeth told her?"

"That Father would have to give up his classes, and get away some where? But of course he can't do it."

"But he can! Miss Lady has rented Thornwood from the man who bought