“Aunt Elizabeth,” I said, sadly, “I am younger than you—­”

“Not so very much!” retorted Aunt Elizabeth.

“—­and I must speak to you with the respect due my father’s sister when I say that the nobility of your conduct on this occasion—­a nobility which you will pardon me for suggesting that I didn’t altogether count on—­is likely to prove the catastrophe of the situation.”

Aunt Elizabeth stared at me with her wet, coquettish eyes.  “You’re pretty hard on me, Maria,” she said; “you always were.”

“Hurry and dress,” I suggested, soothingly; “there are two gentlemen to see you downstairs.”

Aunt Elizabeth shook her head.  She asserted with evident sincerity that she didn’t wish to see any gentlemen; she didn’t care to see any gentlemen under any circumstances; she never meant to have anything to do with gentlemen again.  She said something about becoming a deaconess in the Episcopal Church; she spoke of the attractions in the life of a trained nurse; mentioned settlement work; and asked me what I thought of Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton.

“This is one advantage that Catholics have over us,” she observed, dreamily:  “one could go into a nunnery; then one would be quite sure there would be no men to let loose the consequences of their natures and conduct upon a woman’s whole existence.”

“These two downstairs have waited a good while,” I returned, carelessly.  “One of them is a married man and is used to it.  But the other is not.”

“Very well,” said Aunt Elizabeth, with what (it occurred to me) was a smile of forced dejection.  “To please you, Maria, I will go down.”

If Aunt Elizabeth’s dejection were assumed, mine was not.  I have been in the lowest possible spirits since my unlucky discovery.  Anything and everything had occurred to me except that she and that boy could quarrel.  I had fancied him shadowing Mrs. Chataway for the slightest sign of his charmer.  I don’t know that I should have been surprised to see him curled up, like a dog, asleep on the door-steps.  At the present moment I have no more means of finding the wetched lad than I had in Eastridge; not so much, for doubtless Peggy has his prehistoric addresses.  I am very unhappy.  I have not had the heart left in me to admire Dr. Denbigh, who has filled his role brilliantly all the afternoon.  In half an hour he and Aunt Elizabeth had philandered as deep as a six months’ flirtation; and I must say that they have kept at it with an art amounting almost to sincerity.  Aunt Elizabeth did not once mention settlement work, and put no inquiries to Dr. Denbigh about Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, or Clara Barton.

I think he took her to the Metropolitan Museum; I know he invited her to the theatre; and there is some sort of an appointment for to-morrow morning, I forget what.  But my marked success at this end of the stage only adds poignancy to my sense of defeat at the other.