"Not the least in the world," I returned hastily. "Why should there be?" "I didn’t know—but of course you always were a sensible person." I grinned in my guilty fashion. "How is everything?" she continued brightly. "I heard—about your firm. You in business now?" I mentioned my connection with Visconti’s Banca e Casa Commerciale. "You’re a sort of hero of romance," she smiled speculatively over my head. "And the kiddies," she added, "they all right?" "Going strong." She made no reference to Alicia but I thought it only decent not to leave her in doubt. "Everything in my household is about the same," I said. She nodded. The years of our friendship flashed through my mind, with a sense of regret at the passing and crumbling of human relations. Gertrude would quite naturally have been the one I could have talked to concerning the probable return of Pendleton. Then, on a sudden occurred one of those coincidences which invariably surprise me. For what Gertrude uttered quite carelessly as though merely to fill the conversational pause, was this: "No news of their father, I suppose?" I have never yet lied to Gertrude. I detest lies in general. I was silent. My face must have betrayed me. Gertrude glanced into my eyes and in a startled voice she queried: "_Have_ you?" Briefly, without going into detail, I told her. "Why, Ranny," she exclaimed with a new manner, in a new voice, "that’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard. Wonderful! That’s the greatest luck for you. Your troubles will be over!" "Ah, will they?" I speculated ruefully, rubbing my cheek. "That’s the problem. Shall I be able to trust the children to him again?" "Don’t be a—foolish!" she retorted in almost her old manner. "The responsibility will make a man of him again. Besides—you’ll have to. They are his. I should think you’d jump for joy at the relief. Dear me, what a story!" "Oh—er—I must beg you not—not to mention a word of this to any one," I stammered. "You understand—it’s a ticklish business—for the children’s sake." "Don’t be absurd," she retorted impatiently. "I don’t blab. Will you promise to let me hear how—how things come out?" I promised. At this moment Minot Blackden, his eyes blinded by visions of rose windows, no doubt, bore down and all but collided with us. I introduced them mechanically to mitigate his apologies and left them both bound in the same direction southward. Gertrude waved a hand gayly. "I’ll expect good news!" were her parting words. So I have told some one, I reflected, as I made my way toward Grand Central, and Gertrude expressed what all the world would say: "I ought to jump for joy at the relief. Besides, I shall have to turn them over to Pendleton." The wheels of the train I somberly boarded kept insistently repeating the same self-evident opinion. In addition there was the sickness of death in my soul for the folly of having given the thing away to Gertrude, of all people.