The fact that Philip was a native of the place, and so belonged to a world that was remote from her own, made her free to seek his aid in making the summer pass agreeably without incurring any risk of social obligations.  Besides, when she had seen more of him, she experienced a good deal of pleasure in his company.  His foreign travel, his reading, his life in the city, offered many points of mutual interest, and it was a relief to her to get out of the narrow range of topics in the provincial thought, and to have her allusions understood.  Philip, on his part, was not slow to see this, or to perceive that in the higher intellectual ranges, the serious topics which occupied the attention of the few cultivated people in the neighborhood, Mrs. Mavick had little interest or understanding, though there was nothing she did not profess an interest in when occasion required.  Philip was not of a suspicious nature, and it may not have occurred to him that Mrs. Mavick was simply amusing herself, as she would do with any agreeable man, young or old, who fell in her way, and would continue to do so if she reached the age of ninety.

On the contrary, it never seemed to occur to Mrs. Mavick, who was generally suspicious, that Philip was making himself agreeable to the mother of Evelyn.  In her thought Evelyn was still a child, in leading-strings, and would be till she was formally launched, and the social gulf between the great heiress and the law clerk and poor writer was simply impassable.  All of which goes to show that the most astute women are not always the wisest.

To one person in Rivervale the coming of Mrs. Mavick and her train of worldliness was unwelcome.  It disturbed the peaceful simplicity of the village, and it was likely to cloud her pleasure in Philip’s visit.  She felt that Mrs. Mavick was taking him away from the sweet serenity of their life, and that in everything she said or did there was an element of unrest and excitement.  She was careful, however, not to show any of this apprehension to Philip; she showed it only by an increased affectionate interest in him and his concerns, and in trying to make the old home more dear to him.  Mrs. Mavick was loud in her praise of Alice to her cousin, and sought to win her confidence, but she was, after all, a little shy of her, and probably would have characterized her to a city friend as a sort of virgin in the Bible.

It so happened that day after day went by without giving Philip anything more than passing glimpses of Evelyn, when she was driving with her mother or her governess.  Yet Rivervale never seemed so ravishingly beautiful to all his senses.  Surely it was possessed by a spirit of romance and poetry, which he had never perceived before, and he wasted a good deal of time in gazing on the river, on the gracious meadows, on the graceful contours of the hills.  When he was a lad, in the tree-top, there had been something stimulating and almost heroic in the scene, which awakened his