Mark Hemenway was a man of limited means, but of unlimited ambitions. Every day saw him more and more indispensable to his comfort-loving employer, and every day saw him more and more determined to attain to his latest desire—nothing less than the hand of this same employer’s daughter in marriage. In a vague way Mrs. Barrington was aware of this, though Hemenway was, as yet, most circumspect in his actions. Mrs. Barrington was greatly disturbed, otherwise she would not have ventured to remonstrate with her husband that Sunday afternoon. “My dear,” she began timidly, “isn’t there any other—couldn’t Mr. Hemenway live somewhere else—rather than here?” Her husband turned in his chair, and a frown that Mrs. Barrington always dreaded appeared between his eyebrows. “Now, Bess, why can’t you leave things all comfortable as they are? I like to have you and Ethel here first rate, but I don’t see why you think you must upset things when you stay only five minutes, so to speak.” “I—I don’t mean to upset things, John, but—I don’t like him!” she finished in sudden asperity. “Like him! My dear, who expected you to? Nobody supposes he is one of your palavering, tea-drinking members of the upper ten! He isn’t polished, of course.” “Polished! He’s polished enough, in a way, but—I don’t like the metal to begin with,” laughed Mrs. Barrington, timidly essaying a joke. Her husband’s frown deepened. “But, Bess, don’t you see? I must have him here—it’s easier for me, lots easier. Why can’t you let things be as they are, and not bother?” he urged in the tone of a fretful boy. Mrs. Barrington knew the tone, and she knew, too, the meaning of the nervous twitching of her husband’s fingers. “Well, well, John,” she said, hastily rising, “I won’t say anything more,” and the door closed softly behind her. As she passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of Ethel and her friend starting for a walk, and the strange unlikeness of the two girls struck her anew. Just why Ethel should have chosen Dorothy Fenno for a week’s visit to The Maples, Mrs. Barrington could not understand. Perhaps it would have puzzled Ethel herself to have given a satisfactory reason. Ethel Barrington had met Dorothy Fenno the winter before on a committee connected with a fashionable charity, and had contrived to keep in touch with the girl ever since, though the paths of their daily lives lay wide apart. “She is mixed up with ‘settlement work’ and ‘relief bands,’ and everything of that sort,” Ethel had told her mother; “but she’s wonderfully interesting and—I like her!” she had finished almost defiantly. The girls leisurely followed a winding path that skirted the lake and lost itself in the woods beyond. They had walked half an hour when they came to the clearing that commanded the finest view in the vicinity. Ethel dropped wearily to the ground and, with her chin resting in her hand, watched her friend curiously. “Well, my dear girl, you——”