opinions. Yet, his comment, meager as it was, stood wholly in
Mary's favor. And he spoke with a certain authority, since he
had given official attention to the girl.

Smithson stopped Sarah Edwards, Mr. Gilder's private secretary,
as she was passing through one of the departments that morning,
to ask her if the owner had yet reached his office.

"Been and gone," was the secretary's answer, with the terseness
characteristic of her.

"Gone!" Smithson repeated, evidently somewhat disturbed by the
information. "I particularly wanted to see him."

"He'll be back, all right," Sarah vouchsafed, amiably. "He went
down-town, to the Court of General Sessions. The judge sent for
him about the Mary Turner case."

"Oh, yes, I remember now," Smithson exclaimed. Then he added,
with a trace of genuine feeling, "I hope the poor girl gets off.
She was a nice girl--quite the lady, you know, Miss Edwards."

"No, I don't know," Sarah rejoined, a bit tartly. Truth to tell,
the secretary was haunted by a grim suspicion that she herself
was not quite the lady of her dreams, and never would be able to
acquire the graces of the Vere De Vere. For Sarah, while a most
efficient secretary, was not in her person of that slender
elegance which always characterized her favorite heroines in the
novels she affected. On the contrary, she was of a sort to have
gratified Byron, who declared that a woman in her maturity should