“Any more than a jealous woman,” she contributed. “Can’t say as to the women. But I reckon that, jealous, they ain’t agreeable or safe, either. I’ve made a practice of sloping along at the first eye-flicker of that sort of trouble. But you cheer up, Mrs. Sturgis. The filly I picked as a trailmate for my Dot this morning is as reliable as the hobbies in the riding school.” Despite her manner—and, positively, she was treating him like an eligible—the mother’s black brows had lifted semi-occasionally during his speech, he presumed at his choice of language. Although he jotted down a mental note of the necessity of increased care to weed out his unseasonable crop of hardy range vernacular, somehow her presence made him worse. He remembered having read somewhere that the choice of topics in a refined duet of mixed sexes should be left to the lady. The thought proved restful; left him some spare time for self-communings. Why hadn’t Jane Lauderdale at the very start of the game told him that she was married? Worse he wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe of her. To do her justice, she hadn’t exactly encouraged him, yet she scarcely could have helped seeing with both eyes bandaged the weak state he was in. When she had thrown open a top-floor-front window of that old, scaly, painted-brick retreat of hers last night, had she observed him standing in the shadow of the odorous gas tank opposite? If so, did she understand the hard-dying hope which had kept him stationed there an hour, with five minutes thrown in to benefit the sickening doubt which had been tricked into certainty? If she had seen and understood, did she pity or exult over his observances and deductions? The building was four stories and an attic high. The variance in window curtaining proclaimed it a “flat” house containing at least four separate sets of tenants. As proof, a young mother had emerged with a wailing infant onto the third floor fire-escape landing; a party of four, shirt-sleeved and kimono-clad, could be seen playing cards at a table just within the windows of the second-floor front; the shades of the first were jerked down when the gas was lit. And surely none who could afford the space of an entire house would have endured the district. That beneficial five minutes which failed to benefit he had thrown in after the top floor lights had been suddenly turned out. He’d never have known the stubbornness of his hope that she would reappear, except for hope’s slow death. Undoubtedly she who was known to him as Miss Lauderdale had settled for the night in the home of the tall, blond man who had kissed her in the doorway. He knew where one member of the Sturgis family, at least, went for peace and quiet!