She could find nothing. Her work had been well done. She knew that. There was absolutely no excuse for this sudden taciturn aloofness on his part. After all, it was probably nothing more than what might be expected of him--a going back to his usual self. Without doubt the strange thing was, not that he was stern and silent and morose now, but that, for a brief golden period, he had come out of his shell and acted like a human being. Doubtless it was under the sway of his interest in his curios, and his first delight at seeing them being brought into something like order, that he had, for a moment, as it were, stirred into something really human. And his going back to his original sour unpleasantness now was merely a reversion to first principles. That it should be so vexed Betty not a little. And when they were having such a good time! Surely, for a man that _could_ be so altogether charming and delightful to be habitually so extremely undesirable and disagreeable was most exasperating. And he had been such good company! How kind he had been, too, when she had told him so much of her own life and home! How interested he had shown himself to be in every little detail, just as if he really cared. And now-- With a tense biting of her lip Betty reproached herself bitterly for being so free to tell of her own small affairs. She ought to have known that any interest a man like that could show was bound to be superficial and insincere. What a pity she should lose, for once, her reserve! Well, at least she had learned her lesson. Never again would she be guilty of making a confidant of Mr. Burke Denby, no matter how suave and human-like he might elect to become for some other brief week in the future! To her mother Betty said very little of all this. True, at the first, in her surprise at the remarkable change in her employer's attitude, she had told her mother of his reversion to gloom and sternness; but it had seemed to worry and disturb her mother so much that Betty had stopped at once. And always since then she had avoided speaking of his continued disagreeableness, and skillfully evaded answering pertinent questions. She told herself that she realized, of course, it was because her mother was so fearful that something would happen that this fine position, with the generous pay, should be lost. Dear mother--who thought she was hiding so shrewdly the fact of how poor they were!