It was impossible longer to loiter, and Mrs. Griswold went down-stairs, her long dress trailing, her small head rather disdainfully held up and back, her countenance wearing an expression which all her customary associates, save one, would have regarded with surprise. In the presence of that one, whose ear had caught her first footfall upon the thickly-carpeted stairs, she stood in a few moments and his glance caught the unfamiliar expression and read it aright--without, indeed, its inmost meaning, its complications of origin, but still clearly enough. Trenton Warren was standing in the same place from whence he had watched her so closely on the night which had so severely taxed his self-command and her patience. He was handsomely dressed in his usual accurate unexaggerated style, in a light gray morning suit, and he had an air of perfect leisure about him, simple leisure which was not without its charm. It was the kind of manner which pleases women who live in a business atmosphere, among men who are generally either occupied or over-tired; it said so intelligibly, 'Here I am entirely devoted to your service, having got everything off my mind but yourself.' As all the women of his acquaintance knew Trenton Warren to be as busy a man as his fellows, the compliment was real, and so the manner was effective. He was decidedly liked by women; perhaps the solitary exception to that rule was the one woman for whom he wore this manner most elaborately, most watchfully, most invariably. But Helen Griswold did not like even the air of leisure which was so captivating to other women. It had the misfortune to link itself to the one drawback, the one discomfort, the one injury of her life, and so, woman-like, she distorted its meaning, she refused its tribute. He, too, she bitterly thought, had the presumption to regard her as an ornament, as a being incompetent to fill a serious and sympathetic place in her husband's life; he, too, held that women should be excused from business, and so he came to her a totally unreal creature, a drawing-room lounger, with malice in his quiet smile and insulting depreciation under his deferential address, and the acquiescence in her uselessness which encouraged Alston in his one fault, and made her heart sick with a powerless anger, to which her unerring woman's instinct, as she called it--the least trustworthy guide any woman can follow except within a very limited track--assured her that Trenton Warren was perfectly conscious.