His brain still reeled with the success of his venture--a new name, a northern home, an affectionate old father, and--above all--New York under so friendly a guise. He was no reader of the social items in the newspapers. Names which had become familiar to half the country meant nothing to him; but there had been something about the people he had seen that evening which could not be mistaken by a man of any perception--a certain elegance and courage which together make the faults and virtues of good society. He had never in his wildest dreams imagined Nellie a woman of this type. He had hoped she would be pretty, but he hardly knew whether or not he was pleased to find this cool, perfectly appointed creature, with a full face like a boy, and a profile like an Italian saint. What bonds or barriers were there between them? And if such existed, was he ever to know them? He thought of her letter. “If it was on my account that you went, you need not have gone.” What did it mean? Had there been coquetry on her part? Had there been brutality on Lee’s? And as he wondered he looked up and found himself face to face with her. She had changed her elaborate evening dress for a scarcely less elaborate dressing-gown. She came in, sat down opposite him, crossed her legs, showing a pair of red-heeled bedroom slippers, and said briskly, “Well, Bob?” He attempted to respond with a smile that should be as non-committal as her words, but finding that she continued to stare at him he said, “You were not very cordial in your greeting, Nellie.” At this she laughed as if he were making the best joke in the world, and as if she were most fittingly replying to it when she said, “Ah, but you see I was so surprised.” “Did not you know that I would come back?” “So little that I can still hardly realize it.” Again the doubt crossed his mind whether or not she believed in his identity with her cousin. “It is incomprehensible to me why you did come,” she went on reflectively. He answered truthfully: “Because I wanted to. Heavens, how I wanted to!” “I am glad to hear it,” she returned. “I am glad you acted on a whim rather than from a belated sense of duty, for otherwise it might seem rather ungracious for me to say what I am going to say.” There was something slightly sinister in her tone, but his curiosity had reached such a point that he forgot to be alarmed. “Go on,” he said. “I have done your work for twelve years, Bob, and I don’t mean to do it another instant.” “Done my work?” She went on with the utmost deliberation. She made not the smallest emotional appeal. Vickers had never heard a woman speak more calmly.