The rain still beat fitfully upon the windows, and the room was quite dark.

Gifford had pushed the writing-desk up to the window for the last ray of light, and now he sat there, the papers all arranged and nothing more to do, yet a vague, tender loyalty to the little dead gentleman keeping him.

And sitting, leaning his elbows on the almost unspotted sheet of blue blotting-paper which covered the open flap of the desk, he fell into troubled thinking.
"Of course," he said to himself, "she's awfully distressed about Mr.
Denner, but there's something more than that.

She seems to be watching for something all the time; expecting that fellow, beyond a doubt.

And why he is not there oftener Heaven only knows! And to think of his going off on his confounded business at such a time, when she is in such trouble! If only for a week, he has no right to go and leave her.