Old Salt, apparently, backed her up in this determination, and allowed her to sit next him at table, without addressing her at all. More, he often took it upon himself to answer a remark or question meant for her and for this he sometimes received a fleeting glance, or a ghost of a smile of approval and appreciation. But all this was superficial. The Adamses, between themselves, decided that Miss Austin was more deeply mysterious than was shown by her disinclination to make friends. They concluded she was transacting important business of some sort, and that her sketching of the winter scenery, which she did every clear day, was merely a blind. Though Mrs. Adams resented this, and urged her husband to send the girl packing, Old Salt demurred. “She’s done no harm as yet,” he said. “She’s a mystery, but not a wrong one, ’s far’s I can make out. Let her alone, mother. I’ve got my eye on her.” “I’ve got my two eyes on her, and I can see more’n you can. Why, Salt, that girl don’t hardly sleep at all. Night after night, she sits up looking out of the window, over toward the college buildings—” “How do you know?” “I go and listen at her door,” Mrs. Adams admitted, without embarrassment. “I want to know what she’s up to.” “You can’t see her.” “No, but I hear her moving around restlessly, and putting the window up and down—and Miss Bascom—her room’s cornerways on the ell, she says she sees her looking out the window late at night ’most every night.” “Miss Bascom’s a meddling old maid, and I’d put her out of this house before I would the little girl.” “Of course _you_ would! You’re all set up because she makes so much of you—” “Oh, come now, Esther, you can’t say that child makes much of me! I wish she would. I’ve taken a fancy to her.” “Yes, because she’s pretty—in a gipsy, witch-like fashion. What men see in a pair of big black eyes, and a dark, sallow face, I don’t know!” “Not sallow,” Old Salt said, reflectively; “olive, rather—but not sallow.” “Oh you!” exclaimed Mrs. Adams, and with that cryptic remark the subject was dropped. Gordon Lockwood, secretary of John Waring, had a room at the Adams house. But as he took no meals there save his breakfasts, and as he ate those early, he had not yet met Anita Austin. But one Saturday morning, he chanced to be late, and the two sat at table together. An astute reader of humanity, Lockwood at once became interested in the girl, and realized that to win her attention he must not be eager or insistent. He spoke only one or two of the merest commonplaces, until almost at the close of the meal, he said: “Can I do anything for you, Miss Austin? If you would care to hear any of the College lectures, I can arrange it.” “Who are the speakers?” She turned her eyes fully upon him, and Gordon Lockwood marveled at their depth and beauty. “Tonight,” he replied, “Doctor Waring is to lecture on Egyptian Archaeology. Are you interested in that?” “Yes,” she said, “very much so. I’d like to go.”