he obviously struggled to regain his self-control. "I have often wished I were, however. I am Henry Underwood." He looked up with a sharp defiance in his eyes as he spoke the name. It was as though he expected to see some sign of repulsion.

"I am very glad to meet you, then. My name is Burton. Mrs. Overman, of Putney, asked me to bring a message to your sister."

"You will find her in the house, I suppose," the young man answered carelessly. He turned indifferently away, as though he had no further interest in his visitor, and in a few minutes he was bent over another flower-bed, absorbed in his work.

Burton walked up to the house, his pulses curiously atingle. No wonder the Underwoods got themselves talked about in the neighborhood, if this was a sample of the way in which they met the advances of strangers! After ringing the bell, he glanced back at Henry Underwood. He had risen from the ground and stood with bared head looking up into the branches of the oak with an expression that struck Burton even at that distance as inexpressibly sad.

The door was opened by a middle-aged servant, in whom Burton recognized the woman he had seen gesticulating so violently in the back yard. She looked out at him with surprise and caution, and with the obvious intent of not admitting him without cause shown.

"Is Miss Underwood at home?" he asked.

"I don't know. Likely she is," the woman answered, still with that uncomprehending look of wonder at his intrusion.

"Will you take her my card, please?" And with a little more muscular effort than he was in the habit of using when entering a house, he forced the door far enough back to enable him to pass the guarded portal, and with an air of assurance that was largely factitious, walked into a room opening from the hall, which he judged to be a reception room.

The woman followed him to the door and looked dubiously from him to his card, which she still held in her hand.

"I will wait here while you see if Miss Underwood is at home and whether she can see me. Please look her up at once," he said positively. The tone was effective. The woman departed.

The same evidences of old-time dignity and present-day decay that he had noted in the grounds struck Burton in the drawing-room. The room was a stately one, built according to the old ideas of spaciousness 

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