“Oh, Roger, Roger,” sobbed the girl, “I can do nothing for you and yet you have saved me from shame and are giving us all hope and life.”

“You are responsible for all there is good in me,” he tried to say lightly, “and I’ll show you in coming years if you have done nothing for me.  Good-by now.  It’s all right and settled between us.  Tell Mrs. Jocelyn that one hundred dollars are ready as soon as she can induce her husband to take the step we spoke of.”  And he hastened away, feeling that it was time he retreated if he would make good the generous words he had spoken.

CHAPTER XXXIX

“Home, sweet home!”

“Oh, Millie,” cried Mrs. Jocelyn, entering with the children and throwing herself into a chair, fatigued and panting from her walk and climb of the stairs, “I’ve so much to tell you.  Oh, I’m so distressed and sorry.  It seems that evil has become our lot, and that we bring nothing but evil to others.  You, too, look as if you had been crying as if your heart would break.”

“No, mamma, I feel much better—­more at rest than I have been for a long time.  My tears have done me good.”

“Well, I’m sorry I must tell you something that will grieve you dreadfully, but there’s no help for it.  It does seem when things are going wrong in one’s life, there’s no telling where they’ll stop.  You know Mrs. Wheaton works for Roger’s aunt, Mrs. Atwood.  Well, she was there this morning, and Mrs. Atwood talked dreadfully about us, and how we had inveigled her nephew into the worst of folly.  She told Mrs. Wheaton that Mr. Atwood had intended to give Roger a splendid education, and might have made him his heir, but that he demanded, as his condition, that he should have nothing more to do with such people as we were, and how Roger refused, and how after a bitter quarrel the latter left the house at midnight.  She also said that his uncle would have nothing more to do with him, and that his family at home would be almost equally angry.  Oh, I feel as if I could sink into the earth with shame and worry.  What shall we do?”

“Surely, mamma, there is some mistake.  Roger was here much of the afternoon, and he never said one word about it,” Mildred answered, with a troubled face.

“It’s just like him.  He didn’t want to pain you with the news.  What did he say?” she asked, with kindling interest, and Mildred told her substantially all that had occurred.

“Well, Millie,” said her mother emphatically, “you will be the queerest girl on the face of the earth if you can’t love him now, for he has given up everything for you.  He might have been richer than Vinton Arnold.”

“He must not give up anything,” said Mildred resolutely.  “There is reason in all things.  He is little more than a boy in years, and he has a boy’s simplicity and unworldliness.  I won’t let him sacrifice himself for me.  He doesn’t know what he is doing.  His aunt’s estimate of such people as we have become is correct, and I’ll perish a thousand times before I’ll be the means of dragging down such a man as Roger Atwood.  If I knew where to find him I’d go and tell him so this moment.”