"Well, as well as she could explain afterwards, the catastrophe took her
work out of the category of business and made her acceptance in it a
matter of sentiment."

"She explained it to you herself?"

"Yes, the general sympathy had penetrated to Mrs. Westangle, though I
don't say that she had been more than negatively indifferent to Miss
Shirley's claim on her before. As it was, she sent for me to her room
the next morning, and I found Miss Shirley alone there. She said Mrs.
Westangle would be down in a moment."

Now, indeed, Mrs. Verrian could not govern herself from saying, "I don't
like it, Philip."

"I knew you wouldn't. It was what I said to myself at the time. You
were so present with me that I seemed to have you there chaperoning the
interview." His mother shrugged, and he went on: "She said she wished to
tell me something first, and then she said, 'I want to do it while I have
the courage, if it's courage; perhaps it's just desperation. I am
Jerusha Brown.'"

His mother began, "But you said--" and then stopped herself.

"I know that I said she wasn't, but she explained, while I sat there
rather mum, that there was really another girl, and that the other girl's
name was really Jerusha Brown. She was the daughter of the postmaster in
the village where Miss Shirley was passing the summer. In fact, Miss
Shirley was boarding in the postmaster's family, and the girls had become