“Of course,” she replied immediately, “I’d be glad to have any one recommended by you.  I do think my school is unusual.  You see, there is almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies.  And I have been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny; but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is required.  Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and deportment.”

“No,” he stopped her hastily; “it is quite enough to have seen you.”  A deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks.  He had, he thought, been inexcusably clumsy.  He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional.  She was, ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality almost the radiance of an inward light.  Her diffidence, it was clear, co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit.  He said, later: 

“You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the accounts to my Philadelphia office.  The child has been in circumstances of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages money can bring.  Yes—­Eunice Scofield.  And—­” he hesitated, “in view of this....”

“I understand, oh, completely,” Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly.  “You don’t wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account, but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents, parent—­a mother, I gather.”

It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple.  His meeting with Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance.  A fine, delicate, unworldly woman; a fineness different from Phebe’s, submerged in the pursuit of her own salvation.  The former, he realized, was close to forty.  If she had been sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would attend any of her own.  Unmarried.  The blindness of men, their fatuous choice, suddenly surprised him.

He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion at once the solving of his daughter’s future.  Never, he repeated, should Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield.  Stephen would advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully overcoming its obstacles.  He had unbounded faith in the power of money where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable, ultimate scandal.  What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching about him in every direction.  He must discover firmer ground ahead, release from the act of that other man, his youth.  The memory of the serene purity of Miss Brundon’s office recurred to him like a breath from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an utter freedom of spirit.