For a long time she saw no more of him than she saw of Blake. He nodded a good-morning when he came in, and then seemed to lose himself until noon. Where he lunched she did not know. For a while she had rather looked for him, and then, to cure herself of that, had changed her own luncheon place. At night he generally hurried out early--a bad practice in itself: at least once, Farnsworth had wanted him for something after he was gone; he had made no comment, but it was the sort of thing Farnsworth remembered. When, on the very next day, Mr. Pendleton started home still earlier, it had required a good deal of self-control on her part not to stop him. But she did not stop him. For one thing, Blake was at his desk at the time. It was a week later that Miss Winthrop was called into the private office of Mr. Seagraves one afternoon. His own stenographer had been taken ill, and he wished her to finish the day. She took half a dozen letters, and then waited while Farnsworth came in for a confidential consultation upon some business matters. It was as the latter was leaving that Mr. Seagraves called him back. "How is Pendleton getting along?" he inquired. Miss Winthrop felt her heart stop for a beat or two. She bent over her notebook to conceal the color that was burning her cheeks. For an impersonal observer she realized they showed too much. "I think he has ability," Farnsworth answered slowly. "He began well, but he has let down a little lately." "That's too bad," answered Mr. Seagraves. "I thought he would make a good man for us." "I can tell better in another month," Mr. Farnsworth answered. "We need another selling man," declared Mr. Seagraves. "We do," nodded Farnsworth. "I have my eye on several we can get if Pendleton doesn't develop." "That's good. Ready, Miss Winthrop." The thing Miss Winthrop had to decide that night was whether she should allow Mr. Pendleton to stumble on to his doom or take it upon herself to warn him. She was forced to carry that problem home with her, and eat supper with it, and give up her evening to it. Whenever she thought of it from that point of view, she grew rebellious and lost her temper. There was not a single sound argument why her time and her thought should be thus monopolized by Mr. Pendleton. She had already done what she could for him, and it had not amounted to a row of pins. She had told him to go to bed at night, so that he could get up in the morning fresh, and he had not done it. She had advised him to hustle whenever he was on an errand for Farnsworth, and of late he had loafed. She had told him to keep up to the minute on the current investments the house was offering, and to-day he probably could not have told even the names of half of them. No one could argue that it was her duty to keep after him every minute--as if he belonged to her.