Failing to account for the unaccountable, Dorothy waited. He would doubtless come again, and with his coming the apparent mystery would vanish. But when the days passed and he came no more, she grew curious and asked guarded questions of her mother--and received ambiguous answers, since Mrs. Langford, with maternal self-sufficiency, had deemed it unnecessary to take either of her daughters into her confidence in Brant’s affair. So Dorothy wondered, and laid innocent little snares to entrap her father, who had also grown singularly reticent. And when these traps sprung harmless, she tried Antrim, with no better results. No, Brant was still in town, and the chief clerk was not aware of any impending change in his plans. Thus Henry Antrim, vaguely; but Dorothy’s attempt fell upon an inauspicious moment, since it was made on the evening of Antrim’s off day, and her questions were put while he was waiting for Isabel to make ready for the jaunt _à l’opéra_. After this failure Dorothy tried Will, and it was a measure of her concern that she should appeal to him. She had no news of him; had nothing save that which an affectionate sister usually gets in an attempt to fathom the unplumbed depths of a younger brother’s churlishness. Knowing Will’s weakness, she ventured carefully, but she was quite unprepared for his sudden outburst of petulant brutality. “You wonder where Mr. Brant is, do you?” he sneered, mimicking her. “Well, you’ve no business to wonder; that’s all there is about that.” “Why, Will----” “You needn’t try to wheedle me. I don’t know where he is, and, what’s more, I don’t care, as long as he keeps away from here.” “But, Will, you must have some reason----” “Reason enough,” he interrupted rudely; “and that’s all you’ll get out of me in a thousand years.” And he lighted a cigarette and put distance between himself and the chance of further questioning. Knowing nothing of Harding or his story, Dorothy set her brother’s anger down to the account of a natural feeling of resentment toward a comparative stranger who had interfered in Will’s private affair. None the less, the incident added another shrouding to the mystery involving the draughtsman, and Dorothy’s curiosity and concern went one step farther on the road toward anxiety.