face would
betray the fact to Phil and Lloyd that she shared their secret, she
hurried out of the library and up to her room, where Joyce was
rearranging her hair. In response to Joyce's question about her coming
up so early in the evening, she said she had thought of something she
wanted to write in her journal. But when Joyce had gone down she did not
begin writing immediately. Turning down the lamp until the room was
almost in darkness, she sat with her elbows on the window-sill staring
out into the night.

"I never _meant_ to do it!" she kept explaining to her conscience. "It
just did itself. It seemed all right to listen at first, when they were
talking about things I had a right to know, and then I got so
interested, it was like reading a story, and I couldn't go away because
I forgot there was such a person living as _me_. But Lloyd mightn't
understand how it was. She'd scorn to be an eavesdropper herself, and
she'd scorn and despise me if she knew that I just sat there like a
graven image and listened to Phil the same as propose to her."

Hitherto Mary had looked upon Malcolm as Lloyd's especial knight, and
had planned to be his valiant champion should need for her services ever
arise. But this put matters in a different light. All her sympathies
were enlisted in Phil's behalf now. She liked Phil the best, and she
wanted him to have whatever he wanted. He had called her his "angel
unawares," and she wished she could do something to further deserve that
title. Then she began supposing things.

Suppose she should come tripping down the stairs some day (this would be
sometime in the future, of course, when Lloyd's promise to her father
was no longer binding) and should find Phil pacing the room with
impatient strides because the maid of honor had gone off with Sir Feal
to the opera or somewhere, in preference to him, on account of some
misunderstanding. "The little rift within the lute" would be making the
best man's music mute, and now would be her time to play angel unawares
again.

She would trip in lightly, humming a song perhaps, and finding him moody
and downcast, would begin the conversation with some appropriate
quotation. In looking through the dictionary the day before, her eye had
caught one from Shakespeare, which she had stored away in her memory to
use on some future occasion. Yes, that one would be very appropriate to
begin the conversation. She would go up to him and say, archly:

"M