“Eleanor!  I’ve a great mind to go back to that hell-cat, and tell her what I think of her!”

“No.  Very likely she’s right.  I—­I have injured you.  Oh, Maurice, if I have—­”

“You’d have injured me a damn sight more if you hadn’t married me!” he said.

But for the moment her certainty that her marriage was a glorious and perfect thing, collapsed; her voice was a broken whisper: 

“If I’ve spoiled your life—­she says I have;—­I’ll ... kill myself, Maurice.”  She spoke with a sort of heavy calmness, that made a small, cold thrill run down his back; he burst into passionate protest: 

“All I am, or ever can be, will be because you love me!  Darling, when you say things like—­like what you said, I feel as if you didn’t love me—­”

Of course the reproach tautened her courage; “I do!  I do!  But—­”

“Then never say such a wicked, cruel thing again!”

It was when Bingo had been left with Mrs. O’Brien that, on their way back to the hotel, Maurice, in a burst of enthusiasm, invited his third bad moment:  “I am going to have a rattling old dinner party to celebrate your escape from the hag!  How about Saturday night?”

She protested that he was awfully extravagant; but she cheered up.  After all, what difference did it make what a person like Auntie thought!  “But who will you ask?” she said.  “I suppose you don’t know any men here?  And I don’t, either.”

He admitted that he had only two or three acquaintances in Mercer—­“but I have a lot in Philadelphia.  You shan’t live on a desert island, Nelly!”

“Ah, but I’d like to—­with you!  I don’t want anyone but you, in the world,” she said, softly.

He thrilled at the wonder of that:  she would be contented, with him,—­on a desert island!  Oh, if he could only always be enough for her!  He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he would always be enough for her.  Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up two or three fellows.

Then Eleanor’s apprehension spoke:  “What will Mr. Houghton say?”

“Oh, he’s all right,” Maurice said, resolutely hiding his own apprehension.  He could hide it, but he could not forget it.  Even while arranging for his dinner party, and plunging into the expense of a private dining room, he was thinking, of his guardian; “Will he kick?” Aloud he said, “I’ve asked three fellows, and you ask three girls.”

“I don’t know many girls,” she said, anxiously.

“How about that girl you spoke to on the street yesterday? (If Uncle Henry could only see her, he’d be crazy about her!)”

“Rose Ellis?  Well, yes; but she’s rather young.”