"Is it? I had not thought," she answered, hardly looking in his direction. Vance took the hint and his departure. When again out of doors, he straightened himself, and walked with a firmer, more determined tread, conscious of a little tingling in his veins on the whole not disagreeable. In this mood, he reached the corner of the street in which dwelt Miss Ainger, and was very near indeed to passing it, but, recovering himself with a start, turned westward from the Avenue, and again sought the house from which he had gone irresolute a little while before. The door was opened for him by a servant, who did not know "for sure," but "rather thought" Miss Ainger was in the drawing-room. While following the man across a wide hall, Vance espied, lying upon a chair, a man's hat--not the conventional high black hat of the afternoon caller, but a rusty brown "pot" hat, of an unobtrusive pattern. "Humph! the piano-tuner, no doubt," he said to himself, and simultaneously recalled the fact that he had seen the object in question, or its twin brother, that same day. Before the footman could put his hand upon the knob of the drawing-room door, it opened, and the owner of the hat came out. It was indeed Crawford, dressed in morning tweeds, as Vance had seen him at luncheon in the Lawyers' Club, his plain, strong face illuminated with an expression Vance knew nothing akin to, and therefore did not interpret. But Vance did know Miss Ainger for an independent in her set, a girl who struck out for herself to find clever and companionable people with whom to fraternize; and he was accordingly not surprised to meet Crawford here as a visitor. As once before that day, the two men exchanged silent nods, and parted. Vance found Miss Ainger caressing with dainty fingertips a large bunch of fresh violets that lay in her lap and filled the room with fragrance. Kitty Ainger, a daughter of New York, calm, reserved, temperamentally serious, fond of argument upon high themes, cultivated in minor points to a fastidious degree, handsome in a sculptural way, had always seemed to him lacking in the one grace of womanly tenderness he vaguely felt to be of vast moment in a young man's choice for a wife. To-day, as she greeted him, her manner was gentle and gracious to perfection. Perhaps it so appeared in contrast to that of the fair Phyllida who had flouted him in his Aunt Myrtle's drawing-room; perhaps Kitty was really glad of this first occasion in many days when they were alone together, undisturbed.