him; and at others she
defended him against her own charge. And more and more she truly hated
Wickersham.

"So you met Mr. Keith?" said her aunt, abruptly, a day or two after her
return. "How did you like him?"

"I did not like him," said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with a snap,
as if to keep the blood out of her cheeks.

"What! you did not like him? Girls are strange creatures nowadays. In my
time, a girl--a girl like you--would have thought him the very pink of a
man. I suppose you liked that young Wickersham better?" she
added grimly.

"No, I did not like him either. But I think Mr. Keith is perfectly
horrid."

"Horrid!" The old lady's black eyes snapped. "Oh, he didn't ask you to
dance! Well, I think, considering he knew you when you were a child, and
knew you were my niece, he might--"

"Oh, yes, I danced with him; but he is not very nice. He--ah--Something
I saw prejudiced me."

Miss Abby was so insistent that she should tell her what had happened
that she yielded.

"Well, I saw him on the street helping a woman into a carriage."

"A woman? And why shouldn't he help her in? He probably was the only man
you saw that would do it, if you saw the men I met."

"A dis--reputable woman," said Lois, slowly.

"And, pray, what do you know of disreputable women? Not that there are
not enough of them to be seen!"

"Some one told me--and she looked it," said Lois, blushing. The old lady
unexpectedly whipped around and took her part so warmly that Lois
suddenly found herself defending Gordon. She could not bear that others
should attack him, though she took frequent occasion to tell herself
that she hated him. In fact, she hated him so that she wanted to see him
to show him how severe she would be.

The occasion might have come sooner than she expected; but alas! Fate
was unkind. Keith was not conscious until he found that Lois Huntington
had left town how much he had thought of her. Her absence appeared
suddenly to have emptied the city. By the time he had reached his room
he had determined to follow her home. That rift of sunshine which had
entered his life should not be shut out again. He sat down and wrote to
her: a friendly letter, expressing warmly his pleasure at having met
her, picturing jocularly his disappointment at having failed to find
her. He made a single allusion to the Terpsichore episode. He had done
what he could, he said, to soothe his friend's ruffled feelings; but,
though he thought