“Do you mind if I go out for a walk?” asked the crestfallen Lexy; for that was her instinct in any sort of trouble—to get out into the fresh air and walk. “No,” answered Mrs. Enderby; “but I shall ask you to return in half an hour. There is much to be done.” “Done!” cried Lexy. “But what can be done—now?” “That I shall tell you when you return,” said Mrs. Enderby. “In the meantime, I trust you to say nothing of all this to any person whatever. You understand, Miss Moran?” Miss Moran certainly did not understand, but she gave her promise to keep silent, and, putting on her hat and coat, hurried out of the house. Mighty glad she was to get out, too! “But why make a mystery of it like this?” she thought. “Every one has to know, sooner or later, and it’s so—so ghastly, pretending that Caroline’s there! Oh, it doesn’t seem possible, Caroline running off like that, and I never even dreaming she was the least bit interested in any man! I don’t see how she could have seen any one or written to any one without my knowing it. It doesn’t seem possible!” She had reached the corner of Fifth Avenue, and was waiting for a halt in the traffic, when she became aware of a young man who was standing near her and staring at her. She glanced carelessly at him, and he took off his hat, but he got no acknowledgment of his salute. He was a stranger, and she meant him to remain a stranger. The bright-haired, sturdy little Lexy was a very pretty girl, and she was not unaccustomed to strange young men who stared. She knew how to handle them. As she crossed the avenue, he crossed, too. When she entered the park, he followed. Now Lexy was never tolerant of this sort of thing, and to-day, in her anxiety and distress, she was less so than ever. She turned her head and looked the young man squarely in the face with a scornful and frigid look; and he took off his hat again! “Just you say one word,” said she to herself, “and I’ll call a policeman!” Yet, as she walked briskly on, something in the man’s expression haunted her. He didn’t look like that sort of man. His sunburned face somehow seemed to her a very honest one, and the expression on it was not at all flirtatious, but terribly troubled and unhappy. “Perhaps he thinks he knows me,” she thought. “Well, he doesn’t, and he’s not going to, either!” And she dismissed him from her mind. “When did Caroline go?” she pondered, continuing her own miserable train of thought. “While I was doing cross words in the library? If she went out by the front door, she must have gone right past the library. She must have known I was there—and not even to say good-by!” It hurt. She had grown very fond of the shy, quiet Caroline, and she had firmly believed that Caroline was fond of her. What is more, she had thought Caroline trusted her. “She didn’t though. All the time, when we were so friendly together, she must have been planning this and—_what_?”