"If I can go downstairs to-morrow, I can go just as well to-night," I said, "and go I will. She shall not have a shadow on her first evening with her lover, and she's too good-hearted to enjoy it wholly if she thinks I'm moping and sighing in my room. Moreover, I shall not let my shadows make a background for the banker's general prosperity. Stately and patronizing he cannot help being, and Miss Warren may lead him to think that he is under some obligation to me--I wish he might never hear of it--but, by Vulcan and his sledge! he shall have no cause to pity me while he unctuously rubs his hands in self-felicitation." As far as my strength permitted, I made a careful toilet, and sat down to wait. As the sun sank below the horizon, the banker appeared. "Very appropriate," I muttered; "but his presence would make it dark at midday." Miss Warren was talking with animation, and pointing out the surrounding objects of interest, and he was listening with a wonderfully complacent smile on his smooth, full face. "How prosperous he looks!" I muttered. "The idea of anything going contrary to his will or wishes!" Then I saw that a little girl sat on the front seat with Reuben, and that he was letting her drive, but with his hand hovering near the reins. Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb came out and greeted Mr. Hearn cordially, and he in return was very benign, for it was evident that, in their place and station, he found them agreeable people, and quite to his mind. "Why doesn't he take off his hat to Mrs. Yocomb as if she were a duchess?" I growled. "That trunk that fills half the rockaway doesn't look as if he had come to spend Sunday only. Perhaps we are destined to make a happy family. I wonder who the little girl is?". The banker was given what was known as the parlor bedroom, on the ground floor, and I heard Adah taking the little girl to her room. Miss Warren did not glance at my window on her return. "She would have been happy enough had I remained here and sighed like a furnace," I muttered grimly. "Well, idiot! why shouldn't she be?" She had evidently lingered to say something to Mrs. Yocomb, but I soon heard her light step pass up to her room. "Now's my chance," I thought. "Mrs. Yocomb is preparing for supper, and all the rest are out of the way," and I slipped down the stairs with noiseless and rather unsteady tread. Excitement, however, lent me a transient strength, and I felt as if the presence of the banker would give me sinews of steel. I entered the parlor unobserved, and taking my old seat, from which I had watched the approach of the memorable storm, I waited events. The first one to appear was the banker, rubbing his hands in a way that suggested a habit of complacency and self-felicitation. He started slightly on seeing me, and then said graciously: "Mr. Morton, I presume?" "You are correct, Mr. Hearn. I congratulate you on your safe arrival."