Along the Long Island coast lay the haze of early autumn. It was the time of lassitude. In the season of ripening and decay Nature seemed to have lost her spring, and lay in a sort of delicious languor. Sea and shore were in a kind of truce, and the ocean south wind brought cool refreshment but no incentive.

From the sea the old brown farmhouse seemed a snug haven of refuge; from the inland road it appeared, with its spreading, sloping roofs, like an ancient sea-craft come ashore, which had been covered in and then embowered by kindly Nature with foliage. In those days its golden-brown color was in harmony with the ripening orchards and gardens.

Surely, if anywhere in the world, peace was here. But to its owner this very peace and quietness was becoming intolerable. The waiting days were so long, the sleepless nights of uncertainty were so weary. When her work was done, and Edith sat with a book or some sewing under the arbor where the grape clusters hung, growing dark and transparent, and the boy played about near her, she had a view of the blue sea, and about her were the twitter of birds and the hum of the cicada. The very beauty made her heart ache. Seaward there was nothing--nothing but the leaping little waves and the sky. From the land side help might come at any hour, and at every roll of wheels along the road her heart beat faster and hope sprang up anew. But day after day nothing came.

Perhaps there is no greater bravery than this sort of waiting, doing the daily duty and waiting. Endurance is woman's bravery, and Edith was enduring, with an almost broken but still with a courageous heart. It was all so strange. Was it simply shame that kept him away, or had he ceased to love her? If the latter, there was no help for her. She had begged him to come, she had offered to leave the boy with her cousin companion and go to him. Perhaps it was pride only. In one of his short letters he had said, "Thank God, your little fortune is untouched." If it were pride only, how could she overcome it? Of this she thought night and day. She thought, and she was restless, feverish, and growing thin in her abiding anxiety.

It was true that her own fortune was safe and in her control. But with the usual instinct of women who know they have an income not likely to be ever increased, she began to be economical. She thought not of herself; but of the boy. It was the boy's fortune now. She began to look sharply after expenses; she reduced her household; she took upon herself the care of the boy, and other household duties. This was all well for her, for it occupied her time, and to some extent diverted her thoughts.

So the summer passed--a summer of anxiety, longing, and dull pain for Edith. The time came when the uncertainty of it could no longer be endured. If Jack had deserted her, even if he should die, she could order her life and try to adjust her heavy burden. But this uncertainty was quite beyond her power to sustain.

She made up her mind that she would go to the city and seek him. It was what he had written that she must not on any account do, but nothing that could happen to her there could be so bad as this suspense. Perhaps she could bring him back. If he refused, and was angry at her interference, that even would be something definite. And then she had carefully thought out another plan. It might fail, but some action had now become for her a necessity.

Early one morning--it was in September-she prepared for a journey to the city. This little trip, which thousands of people made daily, took on for her the air of an adventure. She had been immured so long that it seemed a great undertaking. And when she bade good-by to the boy for the day she hugged him and kissed him again and again, as if it were to be an eternal farewell. To her cousin were given the most explicit directions for his care, and after she had started for the train she returned to give further injunctions. So she told herself, but it was really for one more look at the boy.

But on the whole there was a certain exhilaration in the preparation and the going, and her spirits rose as they had not done in months before. Arrived in the city, she drove at once to the club Jack most frequented. "He is not in," the porter said; "indeed, Mr. Delancy has not been here lately."

"Is Major Fairfax in?" Edith asked.

Major Fairfax was in, and he came out immediately to her carriage. From him she learned Jack's address, and drove to his lodging-house. The Major was more than civil; he was disposed to be sympathetic, but he had the tact to see that Mrs. Delancy did not wish to be questioned, nor to talk.

"Is Mr. Delancy at home?" she asked the small boy who ran the elevator.

"No'me."

"And he did not say where he was going?"

"No'me."

"Is he not sometimes at home in the daytime?"

"No'me."

"And what time does he usually come home in the evening?"

"Don't know. After I've gone, I guess."

Edith hesitated whether she should leave a card or a note, but she decided not to do either, and ordered the cabman to take her to Pearl Street, to the house of Fletcher & Co.

Mr. Fletcher, the senior partner, was her cousin, the son of her father's elder brother, and a man now past sixty years. Circumstances had carried the families apart socially since the death of her father and his brother, but they were on the most friendly terms, and the ties of blood were not in any way weakened. Indeed, although Edith had seen Gilbert Fletcher only a few times since her marriage, she felt that she could go to him any time if she were in trouble, with the certainty of sympathy and help. He had the reputation of the old-fashioned New York merchants, to whom her father belonged, for integrity and conservatism.

It was to him that she went now. The great shop, or wholesale warehouse rather, into which she entered from the narrow and cart-encumbered street, showed her at once the nature of the business of Fletcher & Co. It was something in the twine and cordage way. There were everywhere great coils of ropes and bales of twine, and the dark rooms had a tarry smell. Mr. Fletcher was in his office, a little space partitioned off in the rear, with half a dozen clerks working by gaslight, and a little sanctum where the senior partner was commonly found at his desk.

Mr. Fletcher was a little, round-headed man, with a shrewd face, vigorous and cheerful, thoroughly a man of business, never speculating, and who had been slowly gaining wealth by careful industr............