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Rh over, she admired Barry. Perhaps Barry did not know it, but if he did not it was no fault of Miss Chichester's. While maidenly modesty would not permit her to make open love to him, there are a thousand ways in which a young woman may manifest her preference for a man with the utmost propriety. Miss Chichester exercised all of them. But, so far, they had been without avail. Easily impressed as Barry was with feminine charms, he had not been impressed with those of Miss Chichester. Therefore he had been unresponsive. Not that he was entirely unaware of her preference for him—dull as he may have been, he could not have failed to understand something of that—but he simply ignored it. The strenuousness of his duties as vice-president of the Malleson Manufacturing Company left him no time to bestow on a love affair in which he was not especially interested. It was, therefore, with no great amount of enthusiasm that he asked Miss Chichester to ride with him this day. Besides, he had something to think about, and he would have preferred to be alone. But he handed her into his car with as much courtesy as though she had been his wife or his sweetheart.

"You're a long way from home, Jane?" he said, inquiringly.

"Yes," she replied, "I've been down on the south side to visit a poor family in which the guild is interested, and it got late before I realized it. I was hurrying along to get out of this section of the city before dark. It was so good of you to pick me up."

"It's a pleasure to have the opportunity."

"Thank you! Now that I've told you where I've been, it's only fair that you should tell me where you've been. Let's exchange confidences."

"By all means! I've been up to Factory Hill to call on a widow."

"Mr. Pickwick was advised to beware of widows."

"Well, I'm not Mr. Pickwick, and, besides, this one isn't dangerous."