The next night Nancy wondered why his manner was so changed, and why he spoke so bitterly of his work, and what was the matter with him anyway.  She reflected that perhaps he was sorry his mother’s visit was over.  For two or three weeks he seemed restless and discontented, and equally unwilling to be included in the “Dutch treats,” or to be left out of them.  And then suddenly the bad mood passed, and Bert was his kind and appreciative and generous self again.  Clark Belknap, also of Maryland, who had plenty of money and a charming personality and manner as well, began to show the familiar symptoms toward Nancy, and Bert told himself that Clark would be an admirable match for her.  Also his Cousin Mary wrote him that his second cousin Dorothy Hayes Hamilton was going to be in New York for a few weeks, and asked him to take her about a little, and see that she had a nice time.  Cousin Mary, as was usual, enclosed a generous check to insure the nice time, and little Dorothy proved to be a very rose of a girl, just as unspoiled as if her fortune had been half a dollar instead of half a million and full of pride in her big cousin, whose Harvard record she evidently knew by heart.

Bert willingly took her about, and they became good friends.  He did not see much of Nancy now, and one of the times he did see her was unfortunate.  He and Dorothy had been having tea at a roof-garden, after a long delightful day in Dorothy’s car, and now he was to take her to her hotel.  Just as he was holding the little pongee wrap, and Dorothy was laughing up at him from under the roses on her hat, he saw Nancy, going out between two older women.  His look just missed hers; he knew she had seen him; had perhaps been watching him, but he could not catch her eye again.

It was a hot night, and Nancy looked a little pale and, although as trim and neat as usual, a little shabby.  Her pretty hands in old gloves she had washed herself, her pretty eyes patiently fixed upon the faces of the women who were boring her in her youth and freshness with the business of sickness and poverty, her whole gentle, rather weary aspect, smote Bert’s heart with a pain that was half a fierce joy.  Never had he loved her in her gaiety and her indifference as he loved her now, when she looked so sweetly, so almost sorrowfully.

A week later he went to see her.

“Well, Mister Bert Bradley,” she smiled at him, unfastening the string from the great box of roses that had simultaneously arrived from some other admirer, “I didn’t know what to make of you!  And who was the more-than-pretty little girl that you were squiring on the Waldorf roof last week?”

“Just my cousin, Dorothy Hamilton.  She went back to Boston to-day.  She’s finished school, and had a year abroad, and now she isn’t quite sure what she wants to do.  How’s Mr. Belknap?”

She narrowed her eyes at him mischievously.

“Don’t you think you’re smart!  These are from him.  He’s very well.  He took me to the theatre last night, and we had a wonderful time.  Come with me into the kitchen, while I put these in water.”