It was that effect of resentment which is lighter even than a touch, the waft of the arrow’s feather; but it could wound a guilty heart, and Mrs. Brinkley sat down where she was, realising with a pang that the time when she might have been everything to this unhappy girl had just passed for ever, and henceforth she could be nothing.  She remained musing sadly upon the contradictions she had felt in the girl’s character, the confusion of good and evil, the potentialities of misery and harm, the potentialities of bliss and good; and she felt less and less satisfied with herself.  She had really presumed to interfere with Fate; perhaps she had interfered with Providence.  She would have given anything to recall her act; and then with a flash she realised that it was quite possible to recall it.  She could telegraph Mavering to come; and she rose, humbly and gratefully, as if from an answered prayer, to go and do so.

She was not at all a young woman, and many things had come and gone in her life that ought to have fortified her against surprise; but she wanted to scream like a little frightened girl as Dan Mavering stepped out of the parlour door toward her.  The habit of not screaming, however, prevailed, and she made a tolerably successful effort to treat him with decent composure.  She gave him a rigid hand.  “Where in the world did you come from?  Did you get my telegram?”

“No.  Did you get my letter?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I took a notion to come right on after I wrote, and I started on the same train with it.  But they said it was no use trying to get into the Hygeia, and I stopped last night at the little hotel in Hampton.  I’ve just walked over, and Mr. Brinkley told me you were out here somewhere.  That’s the whole story, I believe.”  He gave his nervous laugh, but it seemed to Mrs. Brinkley that it had not much joy in it.

“Hush!” she said involuntarily, receding to her chair and sinking back into it again.  He looked surprised.  “You know the Van Hooks are gone?”

He laughed harshly.  “I should think they were dead from your manner, Mrs. Brinkley.  But I didn’t come to see the Van Hooks.  What made you think I did?”

He gave her a look which she found so dishonest, so really insincere, that she resolved to abandon him to Providence as soon as she could.  “Oh, I didn’t know but there had been some little understanding at Washington.”

“Perhaps on their part.  They were people who seemed to take a good many things for granted, but they could hardly expect to control other people’s movements.”

He looked sharply at Mrs. Brinkley, as if to question how much she knew; but she had now measured him, and she said, “Oh! then the visit’s to me?”