“Come into the library,” she said.  As they passed across the hall she told Morden, “I shall not receive any more to-night.”

The moment they were in the smaller and cosier room, without waiting to sit even, she began:  “Mr. Stirling, I dined at the Manfreys yesterday.”  She spoke in a voice evidently endeavoring not to break.  Peter looked puzzled.

“Mr. Lapham, the bank president, was there.”

Peter still looked puzzled.

“And he told the table about a young lawyer who had very little money, yet who put five hundred dollars—­his first fee—­into his bank, and had used it to help—­” Miss De Voe broke down, and, leaning against the mantel, buried her face in her handkerchief.

“It’s curious you should have heard of it,” said Peter.

“He—­he didn’t mention names, b-bu-but I knew, of course.”

“I didn’t like to speak of it because—­well—­I’ve wanted to tell you the good it’s done.  Suppose you sit down.”  Peter brought a chair, and Miss De Voe took it.

“You must think I’m very foolish,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“It’s nothing to cry about.”  And Peter began telling her of some of the things which he had been able to do:—­of the surgical brace it had bought; of the lessons in wood-engraving it had given; of the sewing-machine it had helped to pay for; of the arrears in rent it had settled.  “You see,” he explained, “these people are too self-respecting to go to the big charities, or to rich people.  But their troubles are talked over in the saloons and on the doorsteps, so I hear of them, and can learn whether they really deserve help.  They’ll take it from me, because they feel that I’m one of them.”

Miss De Voe was too much shaken by her tears to talk that evening.  Miss De Voe’s life and surroundings were not exactly weepy ones, and when tears came they meant much.  She said little, till Peter rose to go, and then only: 

“I shall want to talk with you, to see what I can do to help you in your work.  Please come again soon.  I ought not to have brought you here this evening, only to see me cry like a baby.  But—­I had done you such injustice in my mind about that seven dollars, and then to find that—­Oh!” Miss De Voe showed signs of a recurring break-down, but mastered herself.  “Good-evening.”

Peter gone, Miss De Voe had another “good” cry—­which is a feminine phrase, quite incomprehensible to men—­and, going to her room, bathed her eyes.  Then she sat before her boudoir fire, thinking.  Finally she rose.  In leaving the fire, she remarked aloud to it: 

“Yes.  He shall have Dorothy, if I can do it.”

So Dorothy became a pretty regular addition to the informal meals, exhibitions and concerts.  Peter was once more taken to the opera, but Dorothy and Miss De Voe formed with him the party in the box on such nights.  Miss De Voe took him to call on Mrs. Odgen, and sang his praises to both parents.  She even went so far as to say frankly to them what was in her mind.