assented the other woman. "I
don't know what I would have said if it had been my Mamie."

Maria detected a covert tone of delight in this woman's voice. She
realized instinctively that the woman had been jealous that her
companion's niece had been preferred to her daughter, and was
secretly glad that she was jilted. "How does she take it?" she asked.

"She just cries her eyes out, poor child," her friend answered. "She
sets and cries all day, and I guess she don't sleep much. Her mother
is thinkin' of sendin' her to visit her married sister Lizzie down in
Hartford, and see if that won't divert her mind a little."

"I should think that would be a very good idea," said the other
woman. Maria, listening listlessly, whirled about herself in the
current of her own affairs, thought what a cat that woman was, and
how she did not in the least care if she was a cat.

Wollaston Lee was not gone very long. He bowed and said good-evening
to Maria, then seated himself at a little distance. The two women
looked at him with sharp curiosity. "It would be the best thing for
poor Aggie if she could get her mind set on another young man," said
the woman whose niece had been jilted.

"That is so," assented the other woman.

"There's as good fish in the sea as has ever been caught, as I told
her," said the first woman, with speculative eyes upon Wollaston Lee.

It was not long before the train for Amity arrived. Wollaston, with
an almost imperceptible gesture, looked at Maria, who immediately
arose. Wollaston sat behind her on the train. Just before they
reached Amity he came forward and spoke to her in a low voice. "I
have to go on to Westbridge," he said. "Will there be a carriage at
the station?"

"There always is," Maria replied.

"Don't think of walking up at this hour. It is too late. What--"
Wollaston hesitated a second, then he continued, in a whisper, "What
are you going to tell your aunt?" he said.

"Nothing," replied Maria.

"Can you?"

"I must. I don't see any other way, unless I tell lies."

Wollaston lifted his hat, with an audible remark about the beauty of
the evening, and passed through into the next car, which was a
smoker. The two women of the station were seated a little in the rear
across the aisle from Maria. She heard one of them say to the other,
"I wonder who that girl was he spoke to?" and the other's muttered
answer that she didn't know.

Contrary to her expectations, Maria did not find a carriag