“Oh, mercy, yes!” she exclaimed, with sudden recollection. “I had no business to stay so long! Perhaps you can tell me--or no--” She vaguely put together in her mind the facts that Tracy and Horace had been partners, and seemed to be so no longer. “No, you wouldn’t know.” “Have I so poor a legal reputation as all that?” he said, lightly smiling. “Hang it all! One’s friends, at least, ought to dissemble their bad opinions.” “No, it wasn’t about law,” she explained, stum-blingly. “It’s of no importance. I must hurry now. Good-by for the time.” He would have drawn her to him and kissed her at this, but she gently prevented the caress, and released herself from his hands. “Not that,” she said, with a smile in which still some sadness lingered. “I would rather not that. It is better so. And--good-by, Horace, for the time.” He went with her to the door, lighting the hall gas that she might see her way down the stairs. When she had disappeared, he walked for a little up and down the room, whistling softly to himself. It was undeniable that the world seemed vastly brighter to him than it had only a half-hour before. Mere contact with somebody who liked him for himself was a refreshing novelty. “A damned decent sort of girl--considering everything!” he mused aloud, as he locked up his desk for the day. CHAPTER XXXII.--THE ALARM AT THE FARMHOUSE. To come upon the street again was like the confused awakening from a dream. With the first few steps Jessica found herself shivering in an extremity of cold, yet still uncomfortably warm. A sudden passing spasm of giddiness, too, made her head swim so that for the instant she feared to fall. Then, with an added sense of weakness, she went on, wearily and desponding. The recollection of this novel and curious happiness upon which she had stumbled only a few moments before took on now the character of self-reproach. The burning headache had returned, and with it came a pained consciousness that it had been little less than criminal in her to weakly dally in Horace’s office when such urgent responsibility rested upon her outside. If the burden of this responsibility appeared too great for her to bear, now that her strength seemed to be so strangely leaving her, there was all the more reason for her to set her teeth together, and press forward, even if she staggered as she went. Only--where to find Reuben Tracy! The search had been made cruelly hopeless by that shameful delay; and she blamed herself with fierceness for it, as she racked her brain for some new plan, wondering whether she ought to have asked Horace or gone into some of the other offices.