“I’m not afraid of her losing interest in the thing itself,” she answered. “What worries me is--or, no--” She stopped herself with a smile, and made haste to add, “I forgot. I mustn’t be worried. But who is our Miss Minster? Does she own the ironworks? Tell me about her.” “She owns a share of the works, I think. I don’t know how big a share, or, in fact, much else about her. I’ve heard my partner, Horace Boyce, talk lately a good deal--” Tracy did not finish his sentence, for Jessica had sunk suddenly into the chair behind the case, and was staring at him over the glass-bound row of bonnets with wide-open, startled eyes. “_Your partner!_ Yours, did you say? That man?” Her tone and manner very much surprised Reuben. “Why, yes, he’s my partner,” he said, slowly and in wonderment. “Didn’t you know that? We’ve been together since December.” She shook her head, and murmured something hastily about having been very busy, and being cooped up on a back street. This did not explain her agitation, which more and more puzzled Reuben as he thought upon it. He stood looking down upon her where she sat, and noted that her face, though it was turned away from him now, was both pale and excited. “Do you know him?” he asked finally. She shook her head again, and the lawyer fancied she was biting her lips. He did not know well what else to say, and was speculating whether it would not be best to say nothing, when all at once she burst forth vehemently. “I _won’t_ lie to you!” she exclaimed. “I _did_ know him, very much to my cost. And, oh! don’t you trust him! Don’t you trust him, I say! He’s not fit to be with you. Oh, my God!--_don’t_ I know Horace Boyce!” Reuben stood silent, still looking down gravely into the girl’s flashing eyes. What she had said annoyed and disturbed him, but what he thought chiefly about was how to avoid bringing on an explanation which must wound and humiliate her feelings. It was clear enough what she meant, and he compassionately hoped she would not feel it necessary to add anything. Above all things he felt that he wanted to spare her pain. “I understand,” he said at last, as the frankest way out of the dilemma. “Don’t say any more.” He pondered for a minute or so upon the propriety of not saying anything more himself, and then with decision offered her his hand across the showcase, and held hers in his expansive clasp with what he took to be fatherly sympathy, as he said: “I must go now. Good-by. And I shall hear from you soon about the project?” He smiled to reassure her, and added, still holding her hand, “Now, don’t you let worry come inside these doors at all. You have made a famous start, and everything will go well, believe me.” Then he went out, and the shrill clamor of the bell hung to jangle when the door was opened woke Jessica from her day-dream, just as the sunbeams had begun to drive away the night.