“Look at Elaine!  Don’t you call that real harm?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t happen often, and they say there are ways it can be prevented.  Anyway, fellows just can’t help it!  God knows we’d help it if we could.”

Sylvia thought for a moment, and then came back to the immediate question.  “It’s evident what Roger could do in this case.  He is young, and Celeste is still younger.  They might wait a couple of years and Roger might take care of himself, and in time it might be properly arranged.”

But Clive did not seem too warm to the proposition, and Sylvia, who knew Roger Peyton, was not long in making out the reason.  “You mean you don’t think he has character enough to keep straight for a year or two?”

“To tell you the honest truth, we talked it out with him, and he wouldn’t make any promises.”

To which Sylvia answered:  “Very well, Clive—­that settles it.  You can help me find some man for Celeste who loves her a little more than that!”

17.  That afternoon came Aunt Nannie, the Bishop’s wife, in shining chestnut-coloured silk to match a pair of shining chestnut-coloured horses.  Other people, it appeared, had been making inquiries into Roger Peyton’s story, and other people besides Clive Chilton had been telling the truth.  Aunt Nannie gathered the ladies of the family in a hurried conference, and Sylvia was summoned to appear before it—­quite as in the days of her affair with Frank Shirley.

“Miss Margaret” and Aunt Varina were solemn and frightened, as of old; and, as of old, Aunt Nannie did the talking.  “Sylvia, do you know what people are saying about you?”

“Yes, Aunt Nannie” said Sylvia.

“Oh, you do know?”

“Yes, of course.  And I knew in advance that they would say it.”

Something about the seraphic face of Sylvia, chastened by terrible suffering, must have suggested to Mrs. Chilton the idea of caution.  “Have you thought of the humiliation this must inflict upon your relatives?”

“I have found, Aunt Nannie,” said Sylvia, “that there are worse afflictions than being talked about.”

“I am not sure,” declared the other, “that anything could be worse than to be the object of the kind of gossip that is now seething around our family.  It has been the tradition of our people to bear their afflictions in silence.”

“In this case, Aunt Nannie, it is obvious that silence would have meant more afflictions, many more.  I have thought of my sister—­and of all the other girls in our family, who may be led to sacrifice by the ambitions of their relatives.”  Sylvia paused a moment, so that her words might have effect.

Said the bishop’s wife:  “Sylvia, we cannot undertake to save the world from the results of its sins.  God has his own ways of punishing men.”

“Perhaps so, but surely God does not wish the punishment to fall upon innocent young girls.  For instance, Aunt Nannie, think of your own daughters——­”