They were more numerous than they had been for a long time past.  The meeting at Lakefield had changed her mental attitude toward Derek Pruyn, taking a large part of the pain out of her thoughts of him, as well as out of his thoughts of her.  She had avoided seeing him after that one night, and she had heard nothing from him since; but she knew it was impossible for him to go on thinking of her altogether harshly.  She had been useful to him; she had saved Dorothea from a great mistake; she had done it in such a way that no hint of the escapade was likely to become known outside of the few who had taken part in it; she had put herself in a relation toward him which, as a final one, was much to be preferred to that which had existed before.  She could therefore pass out of his life more satisfied than she had dared hope to be with the effect that she had had upon it.  As she stitched she sighed to herself with a certain comfort, when, glancing up, she saw him standing at the door.  The nature of her thoughts, coupled with his sudden appearance, drew to her lips a quiet smile.

“They shouldn’t have shown you in here,” she protested, gently, letting her work fall to her lap, but not rising from her place.

“I insisted,” he explained, briefly, from the threshold.

“You can come in,” she smiled, as he continued to stand in the doorway.  “You can even sit down.”  She pointed to a chair, not far from her own, going on again with her stitching, so as to avoid the necessity for further greeting.  “I suppose you wonder what I’m doing,” she pursued, when he had seated himself.

“I’m not wondering at that so much as whether you ought to be doing it.”

“I can relieve your mind on that score.  It’s a case, too, in which duty and pleasure jump together; for the delight of handling beautiful linen is like nothing else in the world.”

“It seems to me like servants’ work,” he said, bluntly.

“Possibly; but I can do servants’ work at a pinch—­especially when I like it.”

“I don’t,” he declared.

“But then you don’t have to do it.”

“I mean that I don’t like it for you.”

“Even so, you wouldn’t forbid my doing it, would you?”

“I wish I had the right to.  I’ve come here this afternoon to ask you again if you won’t give it to me.”

For a few minutes she stitched in silence.  When she spoke it was without stopping her work or lifting her head.

“I’m sorry that you should raise that question again.  I thought it was settled.”

“Supposing it was, it can be reopened—­if there’s a reason.”

“But there is none.”

“That’s all you know about it.  There’s a very important reason.”

“Since—­when?”

“Since Lakefield.”

“Do you mean anything that Monsieur de Bienville may have said?”

“I do.”

“That wouldn’t be a reason—­for me.”