t from any pleasing accident of
personality; but what was Miss Brent but the transient vehicle of those
graces which Providence has provided for the delectation of the
privileged sex?

These influences were visible in the temperate warmth of Westy's manner,
and in his way of keeping a backward eye on the mute interchange of
comment about the chess-board. At another time his embarrassment would
have amused Justine; but the feelings stirred by her talk with Bessy had
not subsided, and she recognized with a sting of mortification the
resemblance between her view of the Lynbrook set and its estimate of
herself. If Bessy's friends were negligible to her she was almost
non-existent to them; and, as against herself, they were overwhelmingly
provided with tangible means of proving their case.

Such considerations, at a given moment, may prevail decisively even with
a nature armed against them by insight and irony; and the mere fact that
Westy Gaines did not mean to join her, and that he was withheld from
doing so by the invisible pressure of the Lynbrook standards, had the
effect of precipitating Justine's floating intentions.

If anything farther had been needed to hasten this result, it would have
been accomplished by the sound of footsteps which, over-taking her a
dozen yards from the house, announced her admirer's impetuous if tardy
pursuit. The act of dismissing him, though it took but a word and was
effected with a laugh, left her pride quivering with a hurt the more
painful because she would not acknowledge it. That she should waste a
moment's resentment on the conduct of a person so unimportant as poor
Westy, showed her in a flash the intrinsic falseness of her position at
Lynbrook. She saw that to disdain the life about her had not kept her
intact from it; and the knowledge made her feel anew the need of some
strong decentralizing influence, some purifying influx of emotion and
activity.

She had walked on quickly through the clear October twilight, which was
still saturated with the after-glow of a vivid sunset; and a few minutes
brought her to the village stretching along the turnpike beyond the
Lynbrook gates. The new post-office dominated the row of shabby houses
and "stores" set disjointedly under reddening maples, and its arched
doorway formed the centre of Lynbrook's evening intercourse.

Justine, hastening toward the knot of loungers on the threshold, had no
consciousness of anything outside of her own tho