Perplexity passed at once into the certainty that something had happened. The instant thought in the young man's mind was: What's Angela done now? Having risen, he gazed with direct inquiry at his elderly friend. But her eyes glanced away from him; and she put him off further by repeating: "It was stupid of me to keep you." Mrs. Wing added that Mary was certainly at the High School now. Charles, turning disturbed away, remarked that perhaps he would still be in time to help with the office cleaning, and she said that was very kind of him. "She'll be glad to see you, I know. Indeed, she has appreciated all you've done for her--those beautiful articles, for example--more than you quite realize, perhaps." But the young man shook his head, and said with a kind of bitterness: "I've never done anything for her in my life." And then, as he took the lady's hand to say good-bye, he asked abruptly: "But why shouldn't I know what's happened, Mrs. Wing?" "Oh," said Mary's mother, and hesitated. "Yes, why shouldn't you?" said she, and hesitated again. "Well," she began again slowly, "it's nothing so serious, as I said,--just a fresh disappointment for Mary,--that is really all it amounts to with me. Very likely Donald has intimated to you that he was not going to Wyoming?" The caller stared at her dumbfounded. "Not going to Wyoming! Why!--why not?" "Well, he feels, in his new circumstances," said Mrs. Wing, uneasily, "that it would be more suitable to accept the position in New York. But--I really had little opportunity to discuss it with Mary. She seemed--to be frank--much disturbed, she had so set her heart on this work in the West--" "More _suitable_!... How?" "Well, for one thing--it doesn't seem fair to separate Angela so far from her mother, as would have to be the case in Wyoming." But into Charles's mind there had suddenly popped back a stray remark let fall by Donald, in the only talk he had had with him for weeks: "I tell you, Charlie, it's pretty rough on a girl to be dragged off to live in a shack nine miles from nowhere!" A mere passing observation, that he had paid no attention to at the time--but was that it? Was that the reason why another of Mary Wing's most cherished plans must suddenly cave in? He stood utterly dismayed. "So Mrs. Flower," he asked, with some want of composure, "is going to live with them in New York?" "Oh, no,--not for the present, I believe. She feels, and so do I, that young couples should be left to themselves to make their start. But they will be so near that they can visit back and forth--which would be impossible if Donald--" "But Mrs. Flower can't live here by herself?"