“Why, Miss Edgham, you fairly frighten me,” she said, when Maria resisted.

Maria realized the amazement of the pupils when they entered her class-room, the amazement of incredulity and almost disgust.  Everybody seemed amazed and almost disgusted except Wollaston Lee.  He did, indeed, give one slightly surprised glance at her, then he seemed to notice nothing different in her appearance.  The man’s sense of duty and honor was so strong that in reality his sense of externals was blunted.  He had a sort of sublime short-sightedness to everything that was not of the spirit.  He had been convinced the night previous that Maria was beginning to regard him with favor, and being convinced of that made him insensible to any mere outward change in her.  She looked to him, on the whole, prettier than usual because he seemed to see in her love for himself.

When the noon intermission came he walked into her class-room, and invited Maria and Evelyn to go with him to a near-by restaurant and lunch.

“I would ask you to go home with me,” he said, apologetically, to Maria, “but mother has a cold.”

Maria turned pale.  She wondered if he had possibly told his mother.  Then she remembered how he had promised her not to tell without her permission, and was reassured.  Evelyn blushed and smiled and dimpled, and cast one of her sweet, dark glances at him, which he did not notice at all.  His attention was fixed upon Maria, who hesitated, regarding him with her pale, pinched face.  Evelyn took it for granted that Mr. Lee’s invitation was only on her account, and that Maria was asked simply as a chaperon, and because, indeed, he could not very well avoid it.  She jumped up and got her hat.

“It will be perfectly lovely,” she said, and faced them both, her charming face one glow of delight.

But Maria did not rise.  She looked at the basket of luncheon which she had begun to unpack, and replied, coldly, “Thank you, Mr. Lee, but we have our luncheon with us.”

Wollaston looked at her in a puzzled way.

“But you could have something hot at the restaurant,” he said.  The words were not much, but in reality he meant, and Maria so understood him, “Why, what do you mean, after last night?  You know how I feel about you.  Why do you refuse?”

Maria took another sandwich from her basket.  “Thank you for asking us, Mr. Lee,” she said, “but we have our luncheon.”

Her tone was fairly hostile.  The hostility was not directed towards him, but towards the weakness in herself.  But that he could not understand.

“Very well,” he said, in a hurt manner.  “Of course I will not urge you, Miss Edgham.”  Then he walked out of the room, hollowing his back and holding his head very straight in a way he had had from a boy when he was offended.

Evelyn pulled off her hat with a jerk.  She looked at Maria with her eyes brilliant with tears.  “I think you were mean, sister,” she whispered, “awful mean; so there!”