Mrs. Nailor made some smiling reply.  She did not see the expression in Keith’s eyes as they, for a second, caught Lois’s glance.

Just then Miss Abigail came in.  She had grown whiter since Keith had seen her last, and looked older.  She greeted Mrs. Nailor graciously, and Keith cordially.  Miss Lois, for some reason of her own, was plying Mrs. Nailor with questions, and Keith fell to talking with Miss Abigail, though his eyes were on Lois most of the time.

The old lady was watching her too, and the girl, under the influence of the earnest gaze, glanced around and, catching her aunt’s eye upon her, flashed her a little answering smile full of affection and tenderness, and then went on listening intently to Mrs. Nailor; though, had Keith read aright the color rising in her cheeks, he might have guessed that she was giving at least half her attention to his side of the room, where Miss Abigail was talking of her.  Keith, however, was just then much interested in Miss Abigail’s account of Dr. Locaman, who, it seemed, was more attentive to Lois than ever.

“I don’t know what she will do,” she said.  “I suppose she will decide soon.  It is an affair of long standing.”

Keith’s throat had grown dry.

“I had hoped that my cousin Norman might prove a protector for her; but his wife is not a good person.  I was mad to let her go there.  But she would go.  She thought she could be of some service.  But that woman is such a fool!”

“Oh, she is not a bad woman,” interrupted Keith.

“I do not know how bad she is,” said Miss Abigail.  “She is a fool.  No good woman would ever have allowed such an intimacy as she allowed to come between her and her husband; and none but a fool would have permitted a man to make her his dupe.  She did not even have the excuse of a temptation; for she is as cold as a tombstone.”

“I assure you that you are mistaken,” defended Keith.  “I know her, and I believe that she has far more depth than you give her credit for—­”

“I give her credit for none,” said Miss Abigail, decisively.  “You men are all alike.  You think a woman with a pretty face who does not talk much is deep, when she is only dull.  On my word, I think it is almost worse to bring about such a scandal without cause than to give a real cause for it.  In the latter case there is at least the time-worn excuse of woman’s frailty.”

Keith laughed.

“They are all so stupid,” asserted Miss Abigail, fiercely.  “They are giving up their privileges to be—­what?  I blushed for my sex when I was there.  They are beginning to mistake civility for servility.  I found a plenty of old ladies tottering on the edge of the grave, like myself, and I found a number of ladies in the shops and in the churches; but in that set that you go with—!  They all want to be ‘women’; next thing they’ll want to be like men.  I sha’n’t be surprised to see them come to wearing men’s clothes and drinking whiskey and smoking tobacco—­the little fools!  As if they thought that a woman who has to curl her hair and spend a half-hour over her dress to look decent could ever be on a level with a man who can handle a trunk or drive a wagon or add up a column of figures, and can wash his face and hands and put on a clean collar and look like—­a gentleman!”