“Well?”

“Professor Lane isn’t married.  You don’t suppose sister—­”

“What a little goose you are, Evelyn Edgham!” cried Aunt Maria, almost fiercely turning upon her.  “Do you suppose if Maria Edgham had wanted any man she couldn’t have got him?”

“I suppose she could,” said Evelyn meekly.  “And I know Professor Lane is so much older, but he always seemed to like sister, and I didn’t know but she felt badly because he was so ill.”

“Stuff!” said Aunt Maria.  “Come, you had better set the table.  I have got to make some biscuits for supper.  They won’t be any more than done by the time Maria gets back.”

“Did you think she looked so very pale?” asked Evelyn, following her aunt out of the room.

“No, I didn’t think she looked pale at all when I came to look at her,” said Aunt Maria, sharply.  “She looked just as she always does.  It was the light.”

Aunt Maria unhesitatingly lied.  She knew that her niece had been pale, and she believed that it was on account of Professor Lane.  She thought to herself what fools girls were.  There Maria had thrown away such a chance as George Ramsey, and was very likely breaking her heart in secret over this consumptive, old enough to be her father.

Evelyn also believed, in her heart of hearts, that her sister was in love with Professor Lane, but she took a more sentimental view of the matter.  She was of the firm opinion that love has no age, and then Professor Lane had never seemed exactly old to her, and he was a very handsome man.  She thought of poor Maria with the tenderest pity and sympathy.  It almost seemed to her that she herself was in love with Professor Lane, and that his going so far away to recover his health was a cruel blow to her.  She thought of poor Maria walking to the post-office and brooding over her trouble, and her tender heart ached so hard that it might have been Maria’s own.

But Maria, walking to the post-office, realized not so much an ache in her heart as utter horror and terror.  She asked herself how could she possibly continue teaching in that school if Wollaston Lee were principal; how could she endure the daily contact with him which would be inevitable.  She wondered if he could possibly have known that she was teaching in that school when he accepted the position.  Such a deadly fear was over her that her class-room and the great pile of school buildings seemed to her fancy as horrible as a cage of wild beasts.  She felt such a loathing of the man who was legally, although not really, her husband, that the loathing itself filled her with shame and disgust at herself.  She told herself that it was horrible, horrible, that she could not endure it, that it was impossible.  She was in a fairly desperate mood.  She had a sudden impulse to run away and leave everybody and everything, even Evelyn and her aunt, whom she loved so well.  She felt pitiless towards everybody except herself.