“Have you seen him?” she asked.

“No, but he has written.”

“And you think he—­” the girl had her arms around her friend’s neck again, and concealed her blushing face don’t make me say it, McDonald.”

“Yes, dear, I am sure—­I know he does.”

There was a little quiver in her form, but it was not of agony; then she put her hands on the shoulders of her governess, and, looking in her eyes, said: 

“When you did see him, how did he look—­how did he look?—­pretty sad?”

“How could he help it?”

“The dear!  But was he well?”

“Splendidly, so he said.  Like his old self.”

“Tell me,” said the girl.

And Miss McDonald went into delightful details, how he looked, how he walked, how his voice sounded, how he talked, how melancholy he was, and how full of determination he was, his eyes were so kindly, and his smile was never so sweet as now when there was sadness in it.

“It is very long since,” drearily murmured the girl.  And then she continued, partly to herself, partly to Miss McDonald:  “He will come now, can’t he?  Not to that house.  Never would I wish him to set foot in it.  But he is not forbidden to come to the place where we are going.  Soon, you think?  Perhaps you might hint—­oh no, not from me—­just your idea.  Wouldn’t it be natural, after our misfortune?  Perhaps mamma would feel differently after what has happened.  Oh, that Montague! that horrid little man!  I think—­I think I shall receive him coolly at first, just to see.”

But it was not immediately that the chance for a guileless woman to show her coolness to her lover was to occur.  This postponement was not due to the coolness or to the good sense of Philip.  When the catastrophe came, his first impulse was that of a fireman who plunges into a burning building to rescue the imperiled inmates.  He pictured in his mind a certain nobility of action in going forward to the unfortunate family with his sympathy, and appearing to them in the heroic attitude of a man whose love has no alloy of self-interest.  They should speedily understand that it was not the heiress, but the woman, with whom he was in love.

But Miss McDonald understood human nature better than that, at least the nature of Mrs. Mavick.  People of her temperament, humiliated and enraged, are best left alone.  The fierceness with which she would have turned upon any of her society friends who should have presumed to offer her condolence, however sweetly the condescension were concealed, would have been vented without mercy upon the man whose presence would have reminded her of her foolish rudeness to him, and of the bitter failure of her schemes for her daughter.  “Wait, wait,” said the good counselor, “until the turmoil has subsided, and the hard pressure of circumstances compels her to look at things in their natural relations.  She is too sore now in—­the wreck of all her hopes.”