“Just what poor Belle said,” she thought sighingly after he had gone.  “I must disappoint them all.  But Roger will help me out.  He deserves a far better wife than poor shamed, half-crushed Millie Jocelyn can ever make him, and he shall have her, too, for he is much too young and strong not to get over all this before many years elapse.”

Life soon passed into a peaceful, busy routine.  Roger was preparing himself for the junior class in college under the best of tutors, and his evenings, spent with Mildred, were usually prefaced by a brisk walk in the frosty air.  Then he either read aloud to her or talked of what was Greek to good-natured Mrs. Wheaton, who sat knitting in a corner discreetly blind and deaf.  Unknown to Mildred, he was able to aid her very efficiently, for he taxed Mrs. Wentworth’s ingenuity in the invention of all kinds of delicate fancy work, and that good lady, in the most business-like manner, gave the orders to Mildred, who thought that, considering the hard times, she was wonderfully prosperous.

Twice during the winter she went with Roger to Forestville, and she had her little brother and sister spend the Christmas week with her.  It was the brightest experience the little people ever remembered, although, unnoted by them, Mildred, with sad memories that do not belong to childhood, often wiped bitter tears from her eyes as she recalled the terrible events of the preceding holiday season.  She became an efficient ally of Mr. Wentworth, and was almost as glad to aid him, in return for his stanch friendship, as the cause he represented.

She and Vinton Arnold maintained quite a regular correspondence, and the fact occasioned the young man more than one stormy scene.  His mother saw Mildred’s letter before he received it, and the effect of the missive upon him, in spite of his efforts at concealment, were so marked that she at once surmised the source from which it came.  The fact that a few words from Mildred had done more for the invalid than all the expensive physicians and the many health resorts they had visited would have led most mothers to query whether the secret of good health had not been found.  Mrs. Arnold, on the contrary, was only angered and rendered more implacable than ever against the girl.  She wrote to her husband, however, to find out what he could about her family, believing that the knowledge might be useful.  Mr. Arnold merely learned the bare facts that the Jocelyns had become greatly impoverished, that they were living in low tenements, that the father had become a wretched sot, and, worse than all, that the girl herself had been in a station-house, although he believed she was proved innocent of the charge against her.  He therefore wrote to his wife that the correspondence must cease at once, since it might involve the family in disgrace—­certainly in disgraceful associations.  He also wrote to his son to desist, under the penalty of his heaviest displeasure.  With an expression of horror on