“I suppose you don’t mind my knowing—­who it is?”

Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.

“I shan’t mind your knowing—­by-and-by.  I want you to meet him first.  When you’ve once seen him, I know you’ll be more just to me.  Till then I’m willing to go on being—­misunderstood.”

* * * * *

During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner Miriam got no further light on Evie’s love-affairs.  She purposely asked no questions through fear of seeming to force the girl’s confidence, but she obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during the previous year.  His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow’s; and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie’s part that she liked him the better of the two.  It was a situation that called for sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie’s heart, and give her mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl’s social presentation to the world.

Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the “killing off” of the family was the one Miriam dreaded most.  It was when she came within the periphery of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.  She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility.  It was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity, their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works, that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and them.  Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!—­a right maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him—­not one of them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which he could be proud!  Endsleigh Jarrott’s father, for example, had been a banker, Reginald Pole’s the president of a university, Rupert Colfax’s a judge; and it was something like that with them all.  In the midst of so much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a foreign element as a fly in amber.  She came in as the ward of Philip Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered merely as “poor Gertrude’s second husband,” by a marriage which they all considered a mistake.

With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners