“His plans!”

“Well—­when a man with Peter’s one fault offers to help a girl get on in New York—­Please don’t be offended”

“I am not.  Of course it goes without saying that I won’t let him know I’ve had a warning from you.”

“He’d never speak to me again if you even gave him a hint.”

“Don’t be afraid.  I won’t; not the faintest.  Why, we’re landing to-morrow morning early!  There won’t be a chance to say more than ‘Good-bye.’”

“There’s to-night, after I go in.  He’ll be back—–­”

“I’m going in, too.  I shall go when you go.”

“Perhaps it would be better.  Oh, you don’t know what a weight is off my mind!”

“I’m glad it is gone.”

“And you’ll write to me, won’t you, and let me know how you get along?  Write just what you need.  I’ll be delighted—–­”

“If I need anything—­thank you.”

“My address is Sea Gull Manor, Old Chesterton, Long Island.  Shall I write it down?”

“No, please don’t trouble.  I can always remember addresses.  You’re really very good—­to take an interest.  And—­and I know it must have been hard for you to—­to feel you had to speak.”

It was also hard, desperately hard, for Win to pay this tribute to Miss Rolls’s unselfish interest in her moral welfare.  She tried to be grateful, to feel that her late friend’s sister had been brave and fine and unconventional thus to defend a strange girl against one so near.  But despite reason’s wise counsel, her heart was hot within her.  She felt like a heathen assured by an earnest missionary that her god was a myth.

She disliked kind Miss Rolls intensely, and would have loved to let loose upon her somewhat obtuse head the sarcasm of which at that moment she felt herself a past mistress.  She wanted to be rich and important and have Miss Rolls, poor and suppliant, at her mercy.  Horrified, she saw by the searchlight of her own anger dark depths of cruelty and revenge in her own nature.  She longed to rush to Peter and tell him everything, and believe in him again, for it was hard to lose a friend—­an ideal ewe-lamb of a friend.  She wished she might wake up in her overcrowded stateroom and find that this hateful conversation had been a dream.

But she could not do any of these brutal, silly, or impossible things.  She was not dreaming.  All was true.  Miss Rolls had meant well, and Mr. Balm of Gilead did not exist.  He was only Peter Rolls, a rich, selfish fellow who thought girls who had to work fair game.  His sister must know his true inwardness.  Probably she had learned through unpleasant hushed-up experiences, through seeing skeletons unfleshed by Peter stalk into the family cupboard.

“You ungrateful beast, behave yourself!” Miss Child boxed the ears of her sulky ego and shook it.

The throaty quiver in the blackbird voice of the dangerous golliwog went vibrating through Miss Rolls’s conscience in a really painful way.  She felt as if she had had a shock of electricity.  But, thank goodness, the worst was over, and now that she had grasped safety (for instinct said that the girl would not betray), she could afford to be generous.