e followed with her eyes the light step of the graceful girl, who
was beginning to sort things and to bring order out of the confusion,
holding up one article after another and asking questions with an
enforced cheerfulness that was more pathetic than any burst of grief.

"Yes, I know. There, that is laid in smooth." She pretended to be
thinking what to put in next, and suddenly she threw herself into
McDonald's lap and began to talk gayly. "It is all my fault, dear; I
should have stayed little. And it doesn't make any difference. I know
you love me, and oh, McDonald, I love you more, a hundred times more,
than ever. If you did not love me! Think how dreadful that would be. And
we shall not be separated-only by streets, don't you know. They can't
separate us. I know you want me to be brave. And some day, perhaps" (and
she whispered in her ear--how many hundred times had she told her girl
secrets in that way!), "if I do have a home of my own, then--"

It was not very cheerful talk, however it seemed to be, but it was
better than silence, and in the midst of it, with many interruptions,
the packing was over, and some sort of serenity was attained even by
Miss McDonald. "Yes, dear heart, we have love and trust and hope." But
when the preparations were all made, and Evelyn went to her own room,
there did not seem to be so much hope, nor any brightness in the midst
of this first great catastrophe of her life.

XXII

The great Mavick ball at Newport, in the summer long remembered for its
financial disasters, was very much talked about at the time. Long after,
in any city club, a man was sure to have attentive listeners if he,
began his story or his gossip with the remark that he was at the Mavick
ball.

It attracted great attention, both on account of the circumstances that
preceded it and the events which speedily followed, and threw a light
upon it that gave it a spectacular importance. The city journals made
a feature of it. They summoned their best artists to illustrate it,
and illuminate it in pen-and-ink, half-tones, startling colors, and
photographic reproductions, sketches theatrical, humorous, and poetic,
caricatures, pictures of tropical luxury and aristocratic pretension; in
short, all the bewildering affluence of modern art which is brought to
bear upon the aesthetic cultivation of the lowest popular taste. They
summoned their best novelists to throw themselves recklessly upon the
English language, and