"Ben, you're makin' me sick!" responded Miss Mehitable, her voice breaking. "Did you give the poor lamb my letter?" "He wouldn't let me get near enough to do that; but I gave it to a stupid-looking dwarf who was mowing the grass near by. I'm not even sure he understood me. Perhaps he was deaf and dumb. I don't know; but it was the best I could do. She showed me so plainly that I was only making it harder for her by insisting on anything, there was nothing for me to do but to come away, boiling." Ben began striding up and down the living-room, his hands in his pockets, his restlessness causing Pearl to leap up, barely escaping his heavy shoe. Her arched back and her mistress's face both betokened an outraged bewilderment. Mrs. Whipp's eyes and ears were stretched to the utmost. This autocratic young upstart had broken into the house and nearly stepped on her pet. All the same, if he hadn't done so, Miss Upton would still be keeping secrets from her. She had felt sure ever since Miss Mehitable's last trip to the city that there was something unusual in the air and that she was being defrauded of her rights in being shut out from participation therein. Had this young masculine hurricane not stormed in to-night, no telling how long she would have been kept in the dark; so she stopped, looked, and listened, with all her might. "Well, what are you goin' to _do_, Ben?" asked Miss Upton, beseechingly. "You're not goin' to leave it so, are you?" "I should say not. Carder is going to have me on his trail till that exquisite creature is out of his clutches. Never was there a sleuth with his heart in his business as mine will be. Oh!"--Ben, pausing not in the march which sent Pearl to the top of a bookcase, raised his gaze heavenward--"what eyes, Miss Upton! Those beautiful despairing eyes in that dreary, sordid den, cut off from the world!" "Ben, you stop!" whimpered Miss Mehitable, using her handkerchief. "You're breakin' my heart. And to think how you scoffed at me on Sunday!"