to run except on the ice where the wind had cleared the snow. Now what had kept Miss Platt's lazy, comfort-loving husband out so late this evening in the dark and cold?
Ethel went downstairs to find Merrill Kincheloe; and she discovered him sooner than she expected. For the stairways at St. Florentin were carpeted and, as she happened to descend without starting any squeaks in the wood, she came down far enough to glance along the lower hall before Miss Platt's husband was aware that any one was about. She surprised him under the hall light, pressed close to the panels of the "office" door and listening.
He jumped when he saw her, but the next instant he made a really remarkable effort to carry off the situation, greeting Ethel in much the same manner as usual and then asking, almost casually: "Do you know, is Mrs. Kincheloe in there? I wanted to see her but not to interrupt if they were working."
"She's there," Ethel replied superfluously as the vibration of her grandfather's voice was clearly discernible where they were standing. Ethel studied Miss Platt's husband more seriously than she ever had before while he chatted with her in the sitting room, offering his usual, cleverish small talk about general happenings,—the last news of the peace conference, Mrs. Wilson, the prohibition amendment.
Miss Platt's husband was getting along close to forty, and his idleness and vacuity were making ineffaceable marks upon him. His brown hair showed not a filament of gray; and he had kept his skin young,—by cold cream like a woman, Ethel previously had thought. But little pouches puffed under his eyes when he smiled, and his eyes, themselves, were clouded. One
