"Is Captain Ernscliffe at home?" repeated Queenie, in a tone of wistful eagerness. "What do you want of Captain Ernscliffe?" asked the woman, rudely, as she stared suspiciously into the troubled, white face of the beautiful questioner. Queenie drew her slight figure haughtily erect. "My business is with Captain Ernscliffe," she said, in a cool, firm tone that rebuked the woman's impertinent curiosity. "Can I see him?" "Oh, yes, certainly," said the housekeeper, with a palpable sneer. She was offended because Queenie had failed to gratify her curiosity. "Show me in at once, then," said Queenie, making a motion to step across the threshold. But the woman held the door in her hand and placed herself in front of it. "You'll have to travel many a mile from this to see him," she said, maliciously. "What do you mean?" exclaimed Queenie, turning pale. "Is he not at home? I will wait here until he comes then." "You'll wait many a month then," was the grim reply of the offended woman. "I do not understand you," Queenie answered, passing her small hand across her brow with a dim presentiment of coming evil. "Will you please tell me where I can find Captain Ernscliffe?" "You'll find him across the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere in Europe, ma'am!" She fired the words off like a final shot and looked at Queenie, prepared to enjoy her chagrin and amazement, but she was almost frightened by the expression of terrible despair that came over the beautiful, young face. "In Europe," she said in a voice so low and heart-broken the woman could scarcely hear it. "Are you _quite_ sure?" "Quite sure, ma'am. He went away to travel a week after his wife's death, and may not return for years." She made a motion to shut the door, intimating that the conference was ended, but Queenie leaned up against it so that she was compelled to desist. "Can you give me his address that I may write to him?" she said. "Well, I never!" ejaculated the housekeeper, staring at her in amazement. Queenie only repeated her words more plainly. "I know no more of his whereabouts than the dead!" was the answer. "He expected to be traveling all the time." A smothered moan of pain came from the white lips of the listener. "Have you done with me?" asked the woman, impatiently. Queenie looked out into the street. It was almost dark, and a sleety mist was beginning to fall. The lamp-lighters were going their rounds lighting up the gas-lamps at the corners of the streets, and belated pedestrians were hurrying homeward. With a shiver she turned back to the portly, comfortable figure of the woman rustling on the door-sill in her black silk dress, quite unconscious that she was holding the door against her mistress, and the mistress of that elegant brown stone mansion on whose threshold she stood. "You are Captain Ernscliffe's housekeeper?" said Queenie. "Yes, and I am left in charge of the house during his absence," answered the woman, bridling with a sense of her importance.