Nevertheless, Mrs. Carroll's significant words had left an unpleasant echo in her mind which haunted her at intervals all day. Under its influence she made a bold incursion into her kitchen, after a luncheon of chipped beef, dry toast and indifferent baker's cake. "Have we any cold chicken, Annita?" she asked hesitatingly. "I--that is, I am expecting a few friends this afternoon, and I thought----" Miss McMurtry faced about and eyed her mistress with lowering brows. "There ain't any chicken in the place, Mrs. Brewster," she said stonily; "an' as I ain't in the habit of havin' parties sprung on me unbeknownst, I'll be leaving at the end of my month, which is to-morrow--_if_ you please." Elizabeth's new-found dignity enabled her to face the woman's angry looks without visible discomfiture. "Very well, Annita," she said quietly. "Perhaps that will be best for both of us." CHAPTER X Elizabeth greeted her husband that night with a speculative anxiety in her eyes born of the uncomfortable misgivings which had haunted her during the day. And when after dinner he dropped asleep over his evening paper she perceived with a sharp pang of apprehension that his face was thinner than she had ever seen it, that his healthy colour had paled somewhat, and that hitherto unnoticed lines had begun to show themselves about his mouth and eyes. She reached for his hand which hung idly by his side, and the light touch awakened him. "Oh, Sam," she began, "Grandma Carroll insisted upon it that you were looking ill, and I wanted to see if you had any fever; working over there in that unhealthy part of town, you might have caught something." "Who told you it was unhealthy?" he wanted to know. "It really isn't at all, little girl, and you're not to worry about me--or anything." At just what point in his career Samuel Brewster had acquired the Quixotic idea that a woman, and particularly a young and beautiful woman, should not be allowed to taste the smallest drop of the world's bitterness he could not have explained. But the notion, albeit a mistaken one, was as much a part of himself as the blue of his steadfast eyes or the bronzy brown of his crisp locks. "You're not," he repeated positively, "to give yourself the slightest anxiety about me. I never felt better in my life." And he smiled determinedly. "But, Sam dear, I shall be obliged to worry if you are going to be ill, or if--" a misty light breaking in upon her confused thoughts, "you are keeping anything from me that I ought to know. I've been thinking about it all day, and I've been wondering if--" she lowered her voice cautiously--"Annita is perfectly reliable. I've always thought so till to-day. Anyway, she's going to leave to-morrow, and you'll be obliged to go back to my cooking for a while, till I can get some one else."