“Sometimes, really, I think you are the missing twin to little Billy Bob,” answered Phoebe with a laugh, but in an instant her face became grave again.  “I’m worried about Caroline Darrah,” she said softly.  “I found her crying last night after I had finished work.  I was staying here with Mrs. Matilda for the night and I went into her room for a moment on the chance that she would be awake.  She said she had wakened from an ugly dream—­but I know she dreads this presentation, and I don’t blame her.  It was lovely of her to want to give the statue and plucky of her to come and do it—­but it’s in every way trying for her.”

“And isn’t she the darling child?” answered David Kildare, a tender smile coming into his eyes.  “Plucky!  Well I should say so!  To come dragging old Peters Brown’s money-bags down here just as soon as he croaked, with the express intention of opening up and passing us all our wads back.  Could anything as—­as pathetic ever have happened before?”

“No,” answered Phoebe.  Then she said slowly, tentatively, as she looked into David’s eyes that were warm with friendliness for the inherited friend who had preempted a place in both their hearts:  “And the one awful thing for which she can offer no reparation she knows nothing of.  I pray she never knows!”

“Yes, but it is about to do him to the death.  I sometimes wake and find him sitting over his papers at daybreak with burned-out eyes and as pale as a white horse in a fog.”

“But why does it have to be that way?  Andrew isn’t bitter and it isn’t her fault—­she wasn’t even born then.  She doesn’t even know.”

“I think it’s mostly the money,” said David slowly.  “If she were poor it would be all right to forgive her and take her, but a man couldn’t very well marry his father’s blood money.  And he’s suffering God knows.  Here I’ve been counting for years on his getting love-tied at home, and to think it should be like this!  Sometimes I wish she did know—­she offers herself to him like a little child; and thinks she is only doing reverence to the poet.  It’s driving him mad, but he won’t cut and run.”

“And yet,” said Phoebe, “it would kill her to know.  She is so sensitive and she has just begun to be herself with us.  She has had so few friends and she isn’t like we are.  Why, Polly Farrell could manage such a situation better than Caroline Darrah.  She is so elemental that she is positively—­primitive.  I am frightened about it sometimes—­I can only trust Andrew.”  As Phoebe spoke her eyes grew sad and her lips quivered.

“Dear heart,” said David as he took both her hands in his, “it’s just one of those fatal things that no man can see through; he can just be thankful that there’s a God to handle ’em.”  There were times when David Kildare’s voice held more of tenderness than Phoebe was calculated to withstand without heroic effort.  It behooved her to exert the utmost at this moment in order that she might hold her own.