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 occasion of his previous departure for New York. When they were alone, at the end of the day, he referred to his trip.

"Mrs. Rountree's returning," he said.

"Here?" asked Ellen, naturally enough.

"I don't think so," replied Jay. "Just to New York, I believe."

"Oh," said Ellen, and looked at him, immediately to resort to arranging papers on his father's desk, which she did with the half-dreaming inattention he had noticed, recently. "When are you to be back?" she asked finally. "Or are you to be?"

"I'll be back," said Jay; and, to save herself, she could not check a start. He'd be back, whether with his wife or without; he'd return to work here with her. "When, I don't know," he said, watching her with appreciation of that difference in her mood which Lew Alban, feeling, had deemed not business-like at all but domestic. "Did you suppose I was quitting now?" he asked her.

"No," she rejoined, without looking up. She had wanted him to bind himself to return, no matter what his wife did. "What can I 'tend to for you when you're gone?"

"Lew Alban," he replied, and laughed when she jumped. He had no idea of what was within her! "Now if you could only tie him up somehow long enough to give me time to work up my prospects, I'd be much obliged. I've got a lot of stuff started, you know, but there's a good personal reason everywhere, just at present, why I don't get the business.

"Somebody is giving it to somebody else because he's