the chance of his confiding his difficulty to Clemence Verney; and she
had, in her own past, a precedent which made her think such a confidence
not unlikely. If he did carry his scruples to the girl, she argued, the
latter's imperviousness, her frank inability to understand them, would have
the effect of dispelling them like mist; and he was acute enough to know
this and profit by it. So she had hitherto reasoned; but now the girl's
presence seemed to clarify her perceptions, and she told herself that
something in Dick's nature, something which she herself had put there,
would resist this short cut to safety, would make him take the more
tortuous way to his goal rather than gain it through the privacies of the
heart he loved. For she had lifted him thus far above his father, that it
would be a disenchantment to him to find that Clemence Verney did not share
his scruples. On this much, his mother now exultingly felt, she could count
in her passive struggle for supremacy. No, he would never, never tell
Clemence Verney--and his one hope, his sure salvation, therefore lay in
some one else's telling her.

The excitement of this discovery had nearly, in mid-concert, swept Mrs.
Peyton from her seat to the girl's side. Fearing to miss the latter in
the throng at the entrance, she slipped out during the last number and,
lingering in the farther drawing-room, let the dispersing audience drift
her in Miss Verney's direction. The girl shone sympathetically on her
approach, and in a moment they had detached themselves from the crowd and
taken refuge in the perfumed emptiness of the conservatory.

The girl, whose sensations were always easily set in motion, had at first a
good deal to say of the music, for which she claimed, on her hearer's part,
an active show of approval or dissent; but this dismissed, she turned a
melting face on Mrs. Peyton and said with one of her rapid modulations of
tone: "I was so sorry about poor Mr. Darrow."