Calvin is. So he sent you. He has a conscience about it, after all. I don't suppose he'd consent to her living with him?" 

 "Not for one moment," returned Dunham quickly. "Whatever course you consider, that idea must be dismissed." 

 "Whatever course I consider," repeated Miss Lacey bitterly. "Judge Trent has no business to leave all the considering to me. It's cowardly, and it's mean, and I don't care one bit if you tell him I said so!" 

 "I shan't," returned Dunham. "He has sent me. He is prepared to do something, anything in reason that you think best." 

 After this Miss Lacey's problem descended heavily upon her, and she averted her head and looked gloomily at the flying landscape; so Dunham opened his magazine and read until they reached Boston. 

 

 CHAPTER IV 

 HOTEL FRISBIE 

 The Frisbie being a commercial house in a crowded business centre, Miss Lacey was glad of Dunham's safe conduct amid clanging bells and interlacing traffic wagons. She followed him through the dark hall of the hotel and into an elevator. Leaving this, they entered the depressing stretches of a long parlor whose stiff furniture and hangings clung drearily against a harassing wall paper as dingy as themselves. Finding the room empty, Miss Lacey began to speak excitedly as soon as they were seated and Dunham had sent the bell-boy on his errand. 

 "Exactly the sort of a hotel my brother Sam would have come to!" she said. "I wondered why Sylvia chose it. Like as not he's brought her here before." 

 Then her lips snapped together, for she remembered she was not going to speak slightingly of her brother before a stranger. 

 "Too bad he was not the sort of man with whom you and Judge Trent could have been in sympathy," replied Dunham civilly. "It would have made the present situation easier." 

 "Then Calvin has told you about it," returned Miss Martha, with mingled relief and resentment, "and you understand why we can't feel anything except a painful duty in this matter. If Sylvia had stayed 

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