direction of her eyes. As if reminded of the fact by this, he said:

"Armiger asked me if I had ever heard anything more from that girl."

"Has he?" his mother eagerly asked, transferring her glance from the
letters to her son's face.

"Not a word. I think I silenced her thoroughly."

"Yes," his mother said. "There could have been no good object in
prolonging the affair and letting her confirm herself in the notion that
she was of sufficient importance either to you or to him for you to
continue the correspondence with her. She couldn't learn too distinctly
that she had done--a very wrong thing in trying to play such a trick on
you."

"That was the way I looked at it," Verrian said, but he drew a light
sigh, rather wearily.

"I hope," his mother said, with a recurrent glance at the letters, "that
there is nothing of that silly kind among these."

"No, these are blameless enough, unless they are to be blamed for being
too flattering. That girl seems to be sole of her kind, unless the girl
that she 'got together with' was really like her."

"I don't believe there was any other girl. I never thought there was
more than one."

"There seemed to be two styles and two grades of culture, such as they