“Do you know, I take a great fancy to Mrs. Belcher?”

“Do you, really?”

“Yes, indeed.  I think she’s lovely; but I’m afraid she doesn’t like me.  I can read—­oh, I can read pretty well.  She certainly didn’t like it that I had arranged everything and was there to meet her.  But wasn’t she tired?  Wasn’t she very tired?  There certainly was something that was wrong.”

“I think your imagination had something to do with it,” said Mr. Belcher, although he knew that she was right.

“No, I can read;” and Mrs. Dillingham’s voice trembled.  “If she could only know how honestly I have tried to serve her, and how disappointed I am that my service has not been taken in good part, I am sure that her amiable heart would forgive me.”

Mrs. Dillingham took out her handkerchief, near a street lamp, and wiped her eyes.

What could Mr. Belcher do with this beautiful, susceptible, sensitive creature?  What could he do but reassure her?  Under the influence of her emotion, his wife’s offense grew flagrant, and he began by apologizing for her, and ended by blaming her.

“Oh! she was tired—­she was very tired.  That was all.  I’ve laid up nothing against her; but you know I was disappointed, after I had done so much.  I shall be all over it in the morning, and she will see it differently then.  I don’t know but I should have been troubled to find a stranger in my house.  I think I should.  Now, you really must promise not to say a word of all this talk to your poor wife.  I wouldn’t have you do it for the world.  If you are my friend (pressing his arm), you will let the matter drop just where it is.  Nothing would induce me to be the occasion of any differences in your home.”

So it was a brave, true, magnanimous nature that was leaning so tenderly upon Mr. Belcher’s arm!  And he felt that no woman who was not either shabbily perverse, or a fool, could misinterpret her.  He knew that his wife had been annoyed at finding Mrs. Dillingham in the house.  He dimly comprehended, too, that her presence was an indelicate intrusion, but her intentions were so good!

Mrs. Dillingham knew exactly how to manipulate the coarse man at her side, and her relations to him and his wife.  Her bad wisdom was not the result of experience, though she had had enough of it, but the product of an instinct which was just as acute, and true, and serviceable, ten years earlier in her life as it was then.  She timed the walk to her purpose; and when Mr. Belcher parted with her, he went back leisurely to his great house, more discontented with his wife than he had ever been.  To find such beauty, such helpfulness, such sympathy, charity, forbearance, and sensitiveness, all combined in one woman, and that woman kind and confidential toward him, brought back to him the days of his youth, in the excitement of a sentiment which he had supposed was lost beyond recall.

He crossed the street on arriving at his house, and took an evening survey of his grand mansion, whose lights were still flaming through the windows.  The passengers jostled him as he looked up at his dwelling, his thoughts wandering back to the woman with whom he had so recently parted.