“You think he really has sent for her then!” exclaimed Mrs. Evringham.  “You think that is what the telegram meant!  I’m sure of it, too.”  Then after a minute’s exasperated thought, “I believe you are right.  He is just contrary enough for that.  If I had urged him to let the little barbarian come, he couldn’t have been induced to do so.  That wasn’t clever of me!” The speaker made the admission in a tone which implied that in general her cleverness was unquestioned.  “Well, I hope she will worry him out of his senses, and I don’t think there is much doubt of it.  It may turn out all for the best, Eloise, after all, and lead him to appreciate us.”  Mrs. Evringham cast a glance at the mirror and patted her waved hair.  “And yet I’m anxious, very anxious.  He might take a fancy to the girl,” she added thoughtfully.

“I’m such a poor-spirited creature,” remarked Eloise.

“What now?”

“I ought to be strong enough to leave you since you will not come; to leave this roof and earn my own living, some way, any way; but I’m too much of a coward.”

“I should hope so,” returned her mother briefly.  “You’d soon become one if you weren’t at starting.  Girls bred to luxury, as you have been, must just contrive to live well somehow.  They can’t stand anything else.”

“Nonsense, mother,” quietly.  “They can.  They do.”

“Yes, in books I know they do.”

“No, truth is stranger than fiction.  They do.  I have been looking for that sort of stamina in myself for weeks, but I haven’t found it.  It is a cruel wrong to a girl not to teach her to support herself.”

“My dear!  You were going to college.  You know you would have gone had it not been for your poor father’s misfortunes.”

Eloise’s eyes filled again at the remembrance of the young, gay man who had been her boon companion since her babyhood, and at the memory of those last sad days, when she knew he had agonized over her future even more than over that of his volatile wife.

“My dear, as I’ve told you before, a girl as pretty as you are should know that fortune cannot be unkind, nor the sea of life too rough.  In each of the near waves of it you can see a man’s head swimming toward you.  You don’t know the trouble I have had already in silencing those who wished to speak before you were old enough.  They could any of them be summoned now with a word.  Let me see.  There is Mr. Derwent—­Mr. Follansbee—­Mr. Weeks—­”

“Hush, mother!” ejaculated the girl in disgust.

“Exactly.  I knew you would say they were too old, or too bald, or too short, or too fat.  I’ve been a girl myself.  Of course there is Nat Bonnell, and a lot more little waves and ripples like him, but they always were out of the question, and now they are ten times more so.  That is the reason, Eloise,” the mother’s voice became impressive to the verge of solemnity, “why I feel that Dr. Ballard is almost a providence.”