ing like a fool; but I don't see how I was to
blame for his coming back into my life, when I never really wanted him
at all, and certainly never wished to set eyes on him again.

"I don't suppose it would be the least use to ask you not to show this
letter to Mrs. Burton, and I won't, but if you do, I wish you would ask
her what she thinks it means, and whether it's fate, or foreordination,
or _what_."

Mrs. Saunders carried Cornelia's letter to Mrs. Burton, as Cornelia had
foreseen, but the question she put to her was not the abstraction the
girl had suggested. "Mrs. Burton," she asked, "who was it do you
suppose Nie was so mad with that she had to go off and play the fool,
that way?"

Mrs. Burton passed the point of casuistry too. "Well, of course I don't
know, Mrs. Saunders. Has she said anything about Mr. Ludlow lately?"

"No, she hain't said a word, and that seems suspicious. She said a week
or two ago that he had give up trying to paint that Maybough girl, and
that she guessed she had got the last of her lessons from him; but she
didn't seem much troubled about it. But I guess by her not wantin' to
tell, it's him. What do you suppose he did to provoke her?"

"Oh, just some young people's nonsense, probably. It'll come all right.
You needn't worry about it, because if it won't come right of itself,
he'll _make_ it come."

"Oh, I'm not worrying about that," said Mrs. Saunders, "I'm worrying
about this." She gave her the letter Cornelia had enclosed, and as Mrs.
Burton began to read it she said, "If that fellow keeps on writing to
her, I don't know what I _will_ do."

XXX.

Ludlow did not come to see Cornelia, but they met, from time to time,
at Mrs. Westley's, where he was aware of her being rather taken up; at
Mrs. Maybough's, where he found it his duty to show himself after his
failure with Charmian's picture, so as to help Mrs. Maybough let people
know there was nothing but the best feeling about it; and, more to his
surprise, at Wetmore's. At the painter's, Charmian, who came with her,
realized more than anywhere else, her dream of Bohemia, and Wetmore
threw a little excess into the social ease of his life that he might
fulfil her ideal. He proposed that Mrs. Wetmore should set the example
of hilarities that her domestic spirit abhorred; he accused her of
cutting off his beer, and invented conditions of insolvency and
privation that surpassed Charmian's wildest hopes. He borrowed money of
Ludlo