her.  Why had he not said as much to her years before, and why had he now said what he did, as he did?  She thought she had known this man, had fathomed him as to faults and virtues, though at some times she rated their combination more reverently than at others.  Truth to tell, she had known him well; her judgment, impelled by the suggestion of his possible love, had scanned him patiently.  Yet now she owned herself at fault, unable to construe the manner of this action or assign a particular motive with which it was in harmony.  It is by manner that the individual is revealed (for many men may do the same deed), and a friend who perforce must know a friend only by faith and the guessing of the unseen by the seen, fastens instinctively upon signs too slight to be written in the minutest history.  At this moment, as Sophia stood among the vacant seats, the scene of the conversation which had just taken place, she felt that her insight into Robert Trenholme failed her.  She recalled a certain peace and contentment that, in spite of fatigue, was written on his face.  She set it by what he had said, and gained from it an unreasoning belief that he was a nobler man than she had lately supposed him to be; in the same breath her heart blamed him bitterly for not having told her this before, and for telling it now as if, forsooth, it was a matter of no importance.  “How dare he?” Again herself within herself was rampant, talking wildly.  “How dare he?” asked Anger.  Then Scorn, demanded peace again, for, “It is not of importance to me,” said Scorn.

Blue and Red and Winifred and the little boys came out to carry in the chairs and rugs.  A cool breeze came with the reddening of the sunlight, and stirred the maple tree into its evening whispering.

As Sophia worked with the children the turmoil of her thought went on.  Something constantly stung her pride like the lash of a whip; she turned and shifted her mind to avoid it, and could not.

She had deliberately deceived her friends when she had asserted that her uncle had known all Trenholme’s affairs.  She had not the slightest doubt now, looking back, that he had known—­a thousand small things testified to it; but he had not made a confidante of her, his niece, and she knew that that would be the inference drawn from her assertion.  She knew, too, that the reason her uncle, who had died soon after, had not told her was that he never dreamed that then or afterwards she would come into intimate relationship with his protege.  To give the impression that he, and she also, knowing Trenholme’s origin, had overlooked it, was totally false.  Yet she did not regret this falsehood.  Who with a spark of chivalry would not have dealt as hard a blow as strength might permit in return for so mean an attack on the absent man?  But none the less did her heart upbraid the man she had defended.

Sophia stood, as in a place where two seas met, between her indignation against the spirit Mrs. Bennett had displayed (and which she knew was lying latent ready to be fanned into flame in the hearts of only too many of Trenholme’s so-called friends) and her indignation against Trenholme and his history.  But it was neither the one current of emotion nor the other that caused that dagger-like pain that stabbed her pride to the quick.  It was not Robert Trenholme’s concerns that touched her self-love.