in life than
not "making good," and that is, giving the appearance of it and then
collapsing. This was the collapse. Sympathy was all with Clarence
Albert, except among a few frivolous or sentimental souls, like Sally
and Vivie. Young women having the means, who found themselves in Milly's
situation,--with a broken engagement on their hands at the beginning of
the season,--would at once have gone abroad or to California or the
South, to distract themselves, rest their wounded hearts, and allow the
world to forget their affairs, as it promptly would. At least they would
have tried settlement work. But Milly had no money for such gentle
treatment. She had to run the risk of bruising her sensibilities
whenever she set foot out of doors, and she was too healthy-minded to
sit long at home and mope. And home was not a pleasant place these days.

Still, she said to herself defiantly, she was not sorry for what she had
done. A woman's first duty was to her heart, etc.

* * * * *

Eleanor Kemp, who had been ill and away from the city, sent for Milly on
her return. She proved to be the most sympathetic of all her friends,
and Milly decided that Eleanor was her best, as she was her oldest,
friend. At the conclusion of Milly's tale, rendered partly in the comic
vein, Mrs. Kemp sighed, "It's too bad, Milly." The sigh implied that
Milly had damaged herself for the provincial marriage market, perhaps
irretrievably. She might marry, of course, probably would, being sobered
by this fiasco, but after such a failure, nothing "brilliant" might be
expected.

"I just couldn't sit opposite that cold, fishy creature all my life,"
Milly protested. "He got on my nerves--that was it."

"Yes, I understand--but--"

Milly suspected that banking and bankers might get on a woman's nerves,
too, though Walter Kemp was a much more human man than Clarence Albert
ever would be.

"And now what will you do?" her friend inquired. (Milly had confided to
her Horatio's coming disaster.)

"I don't know--something quick!"

"You might help me with my mail and buying--I never seem to get through
with everything--and this New Hospital committee."

"Could I, do you think?" Milly responded eagerly.

So it was arranged that Milly should become a sort of informal lady
secretary and assistant to the banker's wife, with unstated hours,
duties, and compensation,--one of those flexible, vague business and
social arrangements that