"Thank you," returned Mildred courteously, and the young man left the house with a distinct sensation of disappointment because she had not echoed his wish. He could not avoid the suspicion that these young women would now expect and wish to walk in a separate way from that of all connections of his dear lost uncle. He himself would henceforth be classed with Jack, and, strange new disloyalty, the prospect was unsatisfactory. He turned his steps toward the office where he was going to await a cablegram, and on his way undertook to analyze his own unreasonable feelings. "They are nothing to me, those girls," he thought, while memory presented in fresh hues that averted head leaning upon a white hand in Clover’s spasm of impotent pity for Jack, and all of a sudden, instead of theorizing, Page found himself dwelling with eager pride, as if it were the climax of achievement in his life, on the fact that he had been of assistance, of use, of comfort, to that fair, pale creature, set in a sacred niche apart from all the other women in the world. He recalled himself with cold surprise from this Scylla, only to fall into the Charybdis of a reverie in which Miss Bryant’s face and bearing were regal, as she declared that Jack must bear his trials like the rest of the world. Page threw back his head in self-impatience. "She is a fine, bright girl, and I should like to know her better," he thought; "but there is this comfort—in a couple of months I shall have forgotten all about her. I couldn’t remember her if I tried." Before evening he received the expected message from his cousin. Jack sailed from Bremen at once. *CHAPTER IX.* *A CHRISTMAS VISITOR.* The national dispute finished regarding the location of the World’s Fair, a local contest at once arose among Chicago’s citizens as to which portion of the city was best fitted for the display. The debate was long drawn out. Several sites were energetically lauded by their several partisans, and their respective advantages were hotly maintained and as hotly contradicted. It was very interesting to Chicagoans, but to the public outside it was a matter of indifference whether the North Side, the West Side, or the South Side, should win the day. Meanwhile a good many people—like Miss Berry, for instance—forgot that such a thing as preparation for a World’s Fair was going on. She thought it vastly more interesting that Jack Van Tassel had returned from Europe, and that in his desolation instead of going to his father’s deserted house he had begun to read law in his cousin’s office.