She knew this to mean that he was going on from bad to worse, and that his last night’s excess was the beginning of a debauch which could end only in one way.  She must send for the doctor; he would decide what was best, when he saw how Alan came through the day.

Late in the afternoon she heard Mary Enderby’s voice in the reception-room, bidding the man say that if Miss Bessie were lying down she would come up to her, or would go away, just as she wished.  She flew downstairs with a glad cry of “Molly!  What an inspiration!  I was just thinking of you, and wishing for you.  But I didn’t suppose you were up yet!”

“It’s pretty early,” said Miss Enderby.  “But I should have been here before if I could, for I knew I shouldn’t wake you, Bessie, with your habit of turning night into day, and getting up any time in the forenoon.”

“How dissipated you sound!”

“Yes, don’t I?  But I’ve been thinking about you ever since I woke, and I had to come and find out if you were alive, anyhow.”

“Come up-stairs and see!” said Bessie, holding her friend’s hand on the sofa where they had dropped down together, and going all over the scene of last night in that place for the thousandth time.

“No, no; I really mustn’t.  I hope you had a good time?”

“At your house!”

“How dear of you!  But, Bessie, I got to thinking you’d been rather sacrificed.  It came into my mind the instant I woke, and gave me this severe case of conscience.  I suppose it’s a kind of conscience.”

“Yes, yes.  Go on!  I like having been a martyr, if I don’t know what about.”

“Why, you know, Bessie, or if you don’t you will presently, that it was I who got mamma to send him a card; I felt rather sorry for him, that day at Mrs. Bevidge’s, because she’d so obviously got him there to use him, and I got mamma to ask him.  Everything takes care of itself, at a large affair, and I thought I might trust in Providence to deal with him after he came; and then I saw you made a means the whole evening!  I didn’t reflect that there always has to be a means!”

“It’s a question of Mr. Durgin?” said Bessie, coldly thrilling at the sound of a name that she pronounced so gayly in a tone of sympathetic amusement.

Miss Enderby bobbed her head.  “It shows that we ought never to do a good action, doesn’t it?  But, poor thing!  How you must have been swearing off!”

“I don’t know.  Was it so very bad?  I’m trying to think,” said Bessie, thinking that after this beginning it would be impossible to confide in Mary Enderby.

“Oh, now, Bessie!  Don’t you be patient, or I shall begin to lose my faith in human nature.  Just say at once that it was an outrage and I’ll forgive you!  You see,” Miss Enderby went on, “it isn’t merely that he’s a jay; but he isn’t a very nice jay.  None of the men like him—­except Freddy Lancaster, of course; he likes everybody, on principle; he doesn’t