Mrs. Weguelin looked reproachful.  “You surely cannot admire her, too?”

Mrs. Gregory hadn’t understood me.  “Oh, if you really can keep her away, you’re welcome!”

“I only meant,” I explained to the ladies, “that you don’t really begin to see her till you have seen her:  it’s afterward, when you’re out of reach of the spell.”  And I told them of the interview which I had not been able to tell to Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza.  “I doubt if it lasted more than four minutes,” I assured them.

“Up the river?” repeated Mrs. Gregory

“At the landing,” I repeated.  And the ladies consulted each other’s expressions.  But that didn’t bother me any more.

“And you can admire her?” Mrs. Weguelin persisted.

“May I tell you exactly, precisely?”

“Oh, do!” they both exclaimed.

“Well, I think many wise men would find her immensely desirable—­as somebody else’s wife!”

At this remark Mrs. Weguelin dropped her eyes, but I knew they were dancing beneath their lids.  “I should not have permitted myself to say that, but I am glad that it has been said.”

Mrs. Gregory turned to her companion.  “Shall we call to-morrow?”

“Don’t you feel it must be done?” returned Mrs. Weguelin, and then she addressed me.  “Do you know a Mr. Beverly Rodgers?”

I gave him a golden recommendation and took my leave of the ladies.

So they were going to do the handsome thing; they would ring the Cornerlys’ bell; they would cross the interloping threshold, they would recognize the interloping girl; and this meant that they had given it up.  It meant that Miss Eliza had given it up, too, had at last abandoned her position that the marriage would never take place.  And her own act had probably drawn this down upon her.  When the trustee of that estate had told her of the apparent failure of the phosphates, she had hailed it as an escape for her beloved John, and for all of them, because she made sure that Hortense would never marry a virtually penniless man.  And when the work went on, and the rich fortune was unearthed after all, her influence had caused that revelation to be delayed because she was so confident that the engagement would be broken.  But she had reckoned without Hortense; worse than that, she had reckoned without John Mayrant; in her meddling attempt to guide his affairs in the way that she believed would be best for him, she forgot that the boy whom she had brought up was no longer a child, and thus she unpardonably ignored his rights as a man.  And now Miss Josephine’s disapproval was vindicated, and her own casuistry was doubly punished.  Miss Rieppe’s astute journey of investigation—­for her purpose had evidently become suspected by some of them beforehand—­had forced Miss Eliza to disclose the truth about the phosphates to her nephew before it should be told him by the girl herself; and the intolerable position of apparent duplicity