oment. Her silence revealed the fact to the
shrewd woman that she had not intervened a day too soon.

"You promise me, dear, that you will put the whole thing out of your
mind?" and she drew her daughter closer to her and kissed her.

And then Evelyn said slowly: "I shall not have any friends whom you do
not approve, but, mamma, I cannot be unjust in my mind."

And Mrs. Mavick had the good sense not to press the question further.
She still regarded Evelyn as a child. Her naivete, her simplicity, her
ignorance of social conventions and of the worldly wisdom which to Mrs.
Mavick was the sum of all knowledge misled her mother as to her power of
discernment and her strength of character. Indeed, Mrs. Mavick had only
the slightest conception of that range of thought and feeling in which
the girl habitually lived, and of the training which at the age of
eighteen had given her discipline, and great maturity of judgment as
well. She would be obedient, but she was incapable of duplicity, and
therefore she had said as plainly as possible that whatever the trouble
might be she would not be unjust to Philip.

The interview with her mother left her in a very distressed state of
mind. It is a horrible disillusion when a girl begins to suspect that
her mother is not sincere, and that her ideals of life are mean. This
knowledge may exist with the deepest affection--indeed, in a noble mind,
with an inward tenderness and an almost divine pity. How many times
have we seen a daughter loyal to a frivolous, worldly-minded, insincere
mother, shielding her and exhibiting to the censorious world the utmost
love and trust!

Evelyn was far from suspecting the extent of her mother's duplicity,
but her heart told her that an attempt had been made to mislead her, and
that there must be some explanation of Philip's conduct that would be
consistent with her knowledge of his character. And, as she endeavored
to pierce this mystery, it dawned upon her that there had been a method
in throwing her so much into the society of Lord Montague, and that
it was unnatural that such a friend as Philip should be seen so
seldom--only twice since the days in Rivervale. Naturally the very
reverse of suspicious, she had been dreaming on things to come in the
seclusion of her awakening womanhood, without the least notion that the
freedom of her own soul was to be interfered with by any merely worldly
demands. But now things that had occurred, and that her mother ha