The suspension could only be temporary.  She would not have it otherwise.  Two days she showed herself as usual in Newport, and carried herself bravely.  The sympathy looked or expressed was wormwood to her, but she met it with a reassuring smile.  To be sure it was very hard to bear such a blow, the result of a stock intrigue, but it would soon pass over—­it was a temporary embarrassment —­that she said everywhere.

She had not, however, told the news to Evelyn with any such smiling confidence.  There was still rage in her heart against her daughter, as if her obstinacy had some connection with this blow of fate, and she did not soften the announcement.  She expected to sting her, and she did astonish and she did grieve her, for the breaking-up of her world could not do otherwise; but it was for her mother and not for herself that Evelyn showed emotion.  If their fortune was gone, then the obstacle was removed that separated her from Philip.  The world well lost!  This flashed through her mind before she had fairly grasped the extent of the fatality, and it blunted her appreciation of it as an unmixed ruin.

“Poor mamma!” was what she said.

“Poor me!” cried Mrs. Mavick, looking with amazement at her daughter,” don’t you understand that our life is all ruined?”

“Yes, that part of it, but we are left.  It might have been so much worse.”

“Worse?  You have no more feeling than a chip.  You are a beggar!  That is all.  What do you mean by worse?”

“If father had done anything dishonorable!” suggested the girl, timidly, a little scared by her mother’s outburst.

“Evelyn, you are a fool!”

And perhaps she was, with such preposterous notions of what is really valuable in life.  There could be no doubt of it from Mrs. Mavick’s point of view.

If Evelyn’s conduct exasperated her, the non-appearance of Lord Montague after the publication of the news seriously alarmed her.  No doubt he was shocked, but she could explain it to him, and perhaps he was too much interested in Evelyn to be thrown off by this misfortune.  The third day she wrote him a note, a familiar, almost affectionate note, chiding him for deserting them in their trouble.  She assured him that the news was greatly exaggerated, the embarrassment was only temporary, such things were always happening in the Street.  “You know,” she said, playfully, “it is our American way to be up in a minute when we seem to be down.”  She asked him to call, for she had something that was important to tell him, and, besides, she needed his counsel as a friend of the house.  The note was despatched by a messenger.

In an hour it was returned, unopened, with a verbal message from his host, saying that Lord Montague had received important news from London, and that he had left town the day before.

“Coward!” muttered the enraged woman, with closed teeth.  “Men are all cowards, put them to the test.”