“Uncle Silas,” she said, “aren’t you coming to dinner any more?”

He looked up swiftly from under his shaggy brows.  The book fell to the floor.

“Uncle Silas,” said Virginia, bravely, “I came to get you to-day.”

Never before had she known him to turn away from man or woman, but now Judge Whipple drew his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose violently.  A woman’s intuition told her that locked tight in his heart was what he longed to say, and could not.  The shiny black overcoat he wore was on the bed.  Virginia picked it up and held it out to him, an appeal in her eyes.

He got into it.  Then she handed him his hat.  Many people walking home from church that morning marvelled as they saw these two on Locust Street together, the young girl supporting the elderly man over the slippery places at the crossings.  For neighbor had begun to look coldly upon neighbor.

Colonel Carvel beheld them from his armchair by the sitting-room window, and leaned forward with a start.  His lips moved as he closed his Bible reverently and marked his place.  At the foot of the stairs he surprised Jackson by waving him aside, for the Colonel himself flung open the door and held out his hand to his friend.  The Judge released Virginia’s arm, and his own trembled as he gave it.

“Silas,” said the Colonel, “Silas, we’ve missed you.”

Virginia stood by, smiling, but her breath came deeply.  Had she done right?  Could any good come of it all?  Judge Whipple did not go in at the door—­He stood uncompromisingly planted on the threshold, his head flung back, and actual fierceness in his stare.

“Do you guess we can keep off the subject, Comyn?” he demanded.

Even Mr. Carvel, so used to the Judge’s ways, was a bit taken aback by this question.  It set him tugging at his goatee, and his voice was not quite steady as he answered: 

“God knows, Silas.  We are human, and we can only try.”

Then Mr. Whipple marched in.  It lacked a quarter of an hour of dinner, —­a crucial period to tax the resources of any woman.  Virginia led the talk, but oh, the pathetic lameness of it.  Her own mind was wandering when it should not, and recollections she had tried to strangle had sprung up once more.  Only that morning in church she had lived over again the scene by Mr. Brinsmade’s gate, and it was then that a wayward but resistless impulse to go to the Judge’s office had seized her.  The thought of the old man lonely and bitter in his room decided her.  On her knees she prayed that she might save the bond between him and her father.  For the Colonel had been morose on Sundays, and had taken to reading the Bible, a custom he had not had since she was a child.

In the dining-room Jackson, bowing and smiling, pulled out the Judge’s chair, and got his customary curt nod as a reward.  Virginia carved.