anything in particular, after all."

* * * * *

They were interrupted. A man sprang up the outside steps and rang the
doorbell imperatively.

"It's Karl Wander," announced Fulham, who had glanced through the
window. "It's your cousin, Honora."

He went to the door, and Kate heard an emphatic and hearty voice making
hurried greetings.

"Stopped between trains," it was saying. "Can stay ten minutes
precisely--not a second longer. Came to see the babies."

Honora had arisen with a little cry and gone to the door. Now she
returned, hanging on to the arm of a weather-tanned man.

"Miss Barrington," she said, "my cousin, Mr. Wander. Oh, Karl, you're
not serious? You don't really mean that you can't stay--not even
over night?"

The man turned his warm brown eyes on Kate and she looked at him
expectantly, because he was Honora's cousin. For the time it takes to
draw a breath, they gazed at each other. Oddly enough, Kate thought of
Ray McCrea, who was across the water, and whose absence she had not
regretted. She could not tell why her thoughts turned to him. This man
was totally unlike Ray. He was, indeed, unlike any one she ever had
known. There was that about him which held her. It was not quite