"Do stay to lunch," interrupted Winifred.
"Impossible, dear. I am due at home--half an hour ago!" and she laughed at the discrepancy between her appointment and appearance. "Good-by, Winnie." And she was off.
The two, very opposite in temperament, were very warm friends. Winifred saw beneath a light exterior a quantity of good, sound sense and a warm heart. She was a frequent guest at their house. Mrs. Gray liked her, though deploring her occasional indulgence in slang. Mr. Gray enjoyed her racy conversation, and Hubert professed a dislike of her volatile qualities. This last fact grieved Winifred, who liked her friend to be appreciated.
"She has a rather frivolous exterior," she once explained to Hubert, "but she is really very sensible."
"One would like to hear from the sensible interior occasionally," he replied, and Winifred withdrew from the defense. She was the more grieved by his indifference to her friend because, with her quick intuition, she had half guessed at a secret liking in Adèle for her cynical brother.
To-day at luncheon Winifred ventured to offer him the information:
"Adèle Forrester was in to see me this morning."
"I heard her giggle," he replied laconically, and Winifred subsided into silence.
The scene of the morning in the garden haunted Hubert during the hours of business that day. Matters were attended to with his accustomed skill, but always an undercurrent of memory presented to him Winifred's beaming face and her announcement, "I think I have begun to know God."
"I wish I knew Him. I wish I knew the truth," he repeated to himself again and again.
Hubert had entered with heartiness into his father's business, and though still young had already attained a partnership in it. "Robert Gray & Son," read the clear, uncompromising sign, and the name of no firm in the city was more respected. Hubert's devotion to business, rather than to more scholarly pursuits, was a deep gratification to the father, who enjoyed his son's fellowship and found help in his fresh enterprise and keen foresight.
To-day Hubert was glad when the last matters were attended to and he was able to go home. At dinner he was abstracted and silent, and retired to his own apartments. Just off his sleeping room was a smaller one which constituted his laboratory, for Hubert was a man of science in his leisure hours. This room was the one discomfort of poor Mrs. Gray, who feared explosions or electric shocks, and sighed many a time as she heard the door close after the entering form of her son. To-night it closed firmly, and had not opened again before slumber muffled the ears of the apprehensive mother, nor had the light from the single gas burner ceased to throw out its yellow challenge to the mellow, midnight moonlight without. Could Mrs. Gray have looked within, she would have seen Hubert sunk in the depths of a leather covered chair, with his dark, frowning face leaning upon his hand. He was thinking.