“Indeed I’m not!” the girl protested, with white lips.

“You don’t imagine the man is serious?” Richard asked, alarmed by her manner.

“I don’t know!” Harriet answered at random.  “They’ve—­they’ve hardly known each other three weeks!”

“Ah, well!  And she’s only seventeen,” her father said.  “Distract her, amuse her—­if she’s inclined to mope a bit.  Get riding horses!”

No time to think—­no time to trim her course.  Harriet must plunge blindly ahead now.

“Mr. Carter, would you—­if you think wise—­give your mother a hint of this?  Madame Carter is romantic, you know—­”

“Oh, certainly!  Certainly!” he said, approvingly.  “I’ll speak to her.  We must keep Nina a little girl this summer.  And, Miss Field--”

It was said with only a slight change in the pleasant voice.  But it brought a sudden change in their relationship, a tightening of the bonds that were all Harriet’s world now.

“—­Miss Field, I may say here and now that it is an unmixed privilege, in my estimation,” Richard Carter said, simply, “that my daughter, and my son, too, for the matter of that, should have the advantage of your influence, and your example, at this time.  Of course it infinitely simplifies my own problem.  But I don’t mean only that.  I mean that with your knowledge of the world, of work and poverty—­I know them, too, I know their value—­you are infinitely qualified to balance their whole social vision just now.  I have never been unappreciative of the value of a simple, good, unspoiled woman in my household.  I have seen the effect in a thousand ways.  But at the present moment, I hardly know where I could turn without you.  I can only hope that in some way the Carters may be able to repay you!”

The secretary’s shining head dropped, and she rested her elbow on the table, and pressed a white hand tight across her eyes for a moment of silence.  When she faced him again her face was a little pale, and her magnificent eyes heavy with tears.

“I love all the Carters,” she said, simply.  “I only wish I were—­ half what you say!”

And without another word she stood up, folded into a tiny oblong the paper upon which she had been making a few notes, and went slowly to the library door.  More deeply stirred than she had been since the days of her passionate girlhood, she turned on the threshold for a look of farewell.  But Richard Carter had left the desk, and was kneeling on one knee before his safe; he had forgotten her.  Harriet went across the hall, mounted the stairs, and found her own room.  She was hardly conscious of what she was doing or thinking.