ward him--in open idolatry. She is to stay out there
until she is quite well. How curiously things work around! If he
ever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite.

"How my letter wanders! But so do my thoughts wander. If you only
knew, while I write these things, how I am really thinking of other
things. But I must go on in my round-about way. What I started
out to say was that when the scandals, I mean the truth, spread
over the town about Rowan, the three Marguerites stood by him. You
could never have believed that the child had such fire and strength
and devotion in her nature. I called on them one day and was
coldly treated simply because I am your closest friend. Marguerite
pointedly expressed her opinion of a woman who deserts a man
because he has his faults. Think of this child's sitting in moral
condemnation upon you!

"The Hardages also--of course you have no stancher friends than
they are--have stood up stubbornly for Rowan. Professor Hardage
became very active in trying to bring the truth out of what he
believes to be gossip and misunderstanding. And Miss Anna has also
remained loyal to him, and in her sunny, common-sense way flouts
the idea of there being any truth in these reports.

"I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends his
Sunday evenings with Professor Hardage. No one has told him: they
have spared him. Of course every one knows that he was once
engaged to Rowan's mother and that scandal broke the engagement and
separated them for life. Only in his case it was long afterward
found out that the tales were not true.

"I have forgotten Barbee. He and Marguerite had quarrelled before
her illness--no one knows why, unless she was already under the
influence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan. Barbee has gone to
work. A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court and
attracted attention. They say his speech was so full of dignity
and unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying to
recover his self-esteem for Marguerite's having called him trivial
and not yet altogether grown up.

"Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you of
the arrival of the Fieldings--Victor's mother and sisters; and the
house is continually gay with suppers and parties.

"How my letter wanders! It is a sick letter, Isabel, a dead
letter. I must not close without going back to the Merediths once
more. People have been driving out