pear to notice or resent her brevity.

"I took a fancy to you the minute I saw you," she said. "I can't say as
much for the other Easterner that was here last year. But I made up my
mind that it must be a mighty mean man who would treat you badly."

Honora stood as though rooted to the pavement. She found a reply
impossible.

"When I think of my luck," her neighbour continued, "I'm almost ashamed.
We were married on fifteen dollars a week. Of course there have been
trials, we must always expect that; and we've had to work hard,
but--it hasn't hurt us." She paused and looked up at Honora, and added
contritely: "There! I shouldn't have said anything. It's mean of me
to talk of my happiness. I'll drop in some afternoon--if you'll let
me--when I get through my work," said the little woman.

"I wish you would," replied Honora.

She had much to think of on her walk that morning, and new resolutions
to make. Here was happiness growing and thriving, so far as she could
see, without any of that rarer nourishment she had once thought so
necessary. And she had come two thousand miles to behold it.

She walked many miles, as a part of the regimen and discipline to which
she had set herself. Her haunting horror in this place, as she thought
of the colony of which Mr. Beckwith had spoken and of Mrs. Boutwell's
row of French novels, was degeneration. She was resolved to return
to Chiltern a better and a wiser and a truer woman, unstained by the
ordeal. At the outskirts of the town she halted by the river's bank,
breathing deeply of the pure air of the vast plains that surrounded her.

She was seated that afternoon at her desk in the sitting-room upstairs
when she heard the tinkle of the door-bell, and remembered her
neighbour's promise to call. With something of a pang she pushed back
her chair. Since the episode of the morning, the friendship of the
little woman had grown to have a definite value; for it was no small
thing, in Honora's situation, to feel the presence of a warm heart
next door. All day she had been thinking of Mrs. Mayo and her strange
happiness, and longing to talk with her again, and dreading it. And
while she was bracing herself for the trial Mathilde entered with a
card.

"Tell Mrs. Mayo I shall be down in a minute," she said.

It was not a lady, Mathilde replied, but a monsieur.

Honora took the card. For a long time she sat staring at it, while
Mathilde waited. It read:

Mr. Peter Erwin