Mr. Calton looked utterly blank and hopeless.  His reason told him that she was right.  More than that, a certain admiration for her clear-sightedness began to possess him, with the feeling that he would like to have “shown up” a little better than he had in this interview.  If Chris had fallen in love with her—­but Chris was a fool and wouldn’t have appreciated her!

“But you might talk with her, Miss Trotter,” he said, now completely subdued.  “Even if you could not reason her out of it, you might find out what she expects from this marriage.  If you would talk to her as sensibly as you have to me”—­

“It is not likely that she will seek my assistance as you have,” said Miss Trotter, with a faint smile which Mr. Calton thought quite pretty, “but I will see about it.”

Whatever Miss Trotter intended to do did not transpire.  She certainly was in no hurry about it, as she did not say anything to Frida that day, and the next afternoon it so chanced that business took her to the bank and post-office.  Her way home again lay through the Summit woods.  It recalled to her the memorable occasion when she was first a witness to Frida’s flirtations.  Neither that nor Mr. Bilson’s presumed gallantries, however, seemed inconsistent, in Miss Trotter’s knowledge of the world, with a serious engagement with young Calton.  She was neither shocked nor horrified by it, and for that reason she had not thought it necessary to speak of it to the elder Mr. Calton.

Her path wound through a thicket fragrant with syringa and southernwood; the faint perfume was reminiscent of Atlantic hillsides, where, long ago, a girl teacher, she had walked with the girl pupils of the Vermont academy, and kept them from the shy advances of the local swains.  She smiled—­a little sadly—­as the thought occurred to her that after this interval of years it was again her business to restrain the callow affections.  Should she never have the matchmaking instincts of her sex; never become the trusted confidante of youthful passion?  Young Calton had not confessed his passion to her, nor had Frida revealed her secret.  Only the elder brother had appealed to her hard, practical common sense against such sentiment.  Was there something in her manner that forbade it?  She wondered if it was some uneasy consciousness of this quality which had impelled her to snub the elder Calton, and rebelled against it.

It was quite warm; she had been walking a little faster than her usual deliberate gait, and checked herself, halting in the warm breath of the syringas.  Here she heard her name called in a voice that she recognized, but in tones so faint and subdued that it seemed to her part of her thoughts.  She turned quickly and beheld Chris Calton a few feet from her, panting, partly from running and partly from some nervous embarrassment.  His handsome but weak mouth was expanded in an apologetic smile; his blue eyes shone with a kind of youthful appeal so inconsistent with his long brown mustache and broad shoulders that she was divided between a laugh and serious concern.