Keith promptly availed himself of Mrs. Wentworth’s permission, and was soon calling every day or two at her house, and even on those days when he did not call he found himself sauntering up the avenue or in the Park, watching for the slim, straight, trim little figure he now knew so well.  He was not in love with Lois.  He said this to himself quite positively.  He only admired her, and had a feeling of protection and warm friendship for a young and fatherless girl who had once had every promise of a life of ease and joy, and was by the hap of ill fortune thrown out on the cold world and into a relation of dependence.  He had about given up any idea of falling in love.  Love, such as he had once known it, was not for him.  Love for love’s sake—­love that created a new world and peopled it with one woman—­was over for him.  At least, so he said.

And when he had reasoned thus, he would find himself hurrying along the avenue or in the Park, straining his eyes to see if he could distinguish her among the crowd of walkers and loungers that thronged the sidewalk or the foot-path a quarter of a mile away.  And if he could not, he was conscious of disappointment; and if he did distinguish her, his heart would give a bound, and he would go racing along till he was at her side.

Oftenest, though, he visited her at Mrs. Wentworth’s, where he could talk to her without the continual interruption of the children’s busy tongues, and could get her to sing those old-fashioned songs that, somehow, sounded to him sweeter than all the music in the world.

In fact, he went there so often to visit her that he began to neglect his other friends.  Even Norman he did not see as much of as formerly.

Once, when he was praising her voice to Mrs. Wentworth, she said to him:  “Yes, I think she would do well in concert.  I am urging her to prepare herself for that; not at present, of course, for I need her just now with the children; but in a year or two the boys will go to school and the two girls will require a good French governess, or I may take them to France.  Then I shall advise her to try concert.  Of course, Miss Brooke cannot take care of her always.  Besides, she is too independent to allow her to do it.”

Keith was angry in a moment.  He had never liked Mrs. Wentworth so little.  “I shall advise her to do nothing of the kind,” he said firmly.  “Miss Huntington is a lady, and to have her patronized and treated as an inferior by a lot of nouveaux riches is more than I could stand.”

“I see no chance of her marrying,” said Mrs. Wentworth.  “She has not a cent, and you know men don’t marry penniless girls these days.”

“Oh, they do if they fall in love.  There are a great many men in the world and even in New York, besides the small tuft-hunting, money-loving parasites that one meets at the so-called swell houses.  If those you and I know were all, New York would be a very insignificant place.  The brains and the character and the heart; the makers and leaders, are not found at the dinners and balls we are honored with invitations to by Mrs. Nailor and her like.  Alice Lancaster was saying the other day—­”