lf."

"Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea." Wetmore lighted his pipe.
"Confound those fellows! I should like to knock their heads together.
If there is anything like the self-righteousness of a committee when
it's wrong---but there isn't, fortunately."

It was not the first time that Ludlow had faltered in the notion of
going to Cornelia and claiming to be wholly at fault. In thought he was
always doing it, and there were times when he almost did it in reality,
but he let these times pass effectless, hoping for some better time
when the thing would do itself, waiting for the miracle which love
expects, when it is itself the miracle that brings all its desires to
fulfilment. He certainly had some excuses for preferring a passive part
in what he would have been so glad to have happen. Cornelia had
confessed that she had once cared for him, but at the same time she had
implied that she cared for him no longer, and she had practically
forbidden him to see her again. Much study of her words could make
nothing else of them, and it was not until Ludlow saw his way to going
impersonally in his quality of mistaken adviser, from whom explanation
and atonement were due, that he went to Cornelia. Even then he did not
quite believe that she would see him, and he gladly lost the bet he
made himself, at the sound of a descending step on the stairs, that it
was the Irish girl coming back to say that Miss Saunders was not at
home.

They met very awkwardly, and Ludlow had such an official tone in
claiming responsibility for having got Cornelia to offer her picture,
and so have it rejected, that he hardly knew who was talking. "That is
all," he said, stiffly; and he rose and stood looking into his hat. "It
seemed to me that I couldn't do less than come and say this, and I hope
you don't feel that I'm--I'm unwarranted in coming."

"Oh, no," cried Cornelia, "it's very kind of you, and no one's to blame
but me. I don't suppose I should care; only"--she bit her lips hard,
and added deep in her throat--"I hated to have my mother---- But I am
rightfully punished."

She meant for the Dickerson business, but Ludlow thought she meant for
her presumption, and his heart smote him in tender indignation as her
head sank and her face averted itself. It touched him keenly that she
should speak to him in that way of her mother, as if from an
instinctive sense of his loving and faithful sympathy; and then,
somehow he had her in his arms, there in Mrs