often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to get him
something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly because her
moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, she had
examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman's
handwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned the
coat--and the letter. The name on the envelope was Shiel Crozier, but
the name of the man who owned the coat was J. G. Kerry--James Gathorne
Kerry, so he said.

Kitty Tynan had certainly enough imagination to make her cherish a
mystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything else
had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she
felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty
stories which she thought would fit the case of J. G. Kerry, who for over
four years had lived in her mother's house. He had become part of her
life, perhaps just because he was a man,--and what home is a real home
without a man?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential
word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness; indeed, he showed in
his manner occasionally almost a boisterous hilarity. He undoubtedly was
what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a pippin with a perfect
core," which was her way of saying that he was a man to be trusted with
herself and with her daughter; one who would stand loyally by a friend or
a woman. He had stood by them both when Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer,
who had boarded with them when J. G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded
the bounds of liberal friendliness which marked the household, and by
furtive attempts at intimacy began to make life impossible for both
mother and daughter. Burlingame took it into his head, when he received
notice that his rooms were needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry
was the cause of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry
had seen Kitty Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her