I started to say “Then that should enable you to guess at the character of loyalty,” when, glancing at her, I saw that her blush had faded until her little freckles stood out, seeming to spring from her skin. The girl’s heart lay exposed before my eyes, which I considerately turned away. She said, speaking brightly: “Eva Litchfield is very beautiful.” Her lively tone was a weapon in her defense against me. I wanted to pat her shoulder, and remembered that her shoulder was on a level with the crown of my head and that compassion on tiptoes sports the blemish of inelegance. However, the suspicion that Gertrude Cuyler was pathetic had crept upon me, unawares, and it did no good to remember that Charles Glidden had said to me that I must look out for I was only moved by pathos, which is a weakness of the nerves and slides into bathos. I bent upon her a strictly impersonal look and told her that beauty was not all of Eva Litchfield. “Besides, what is there about your friend, and my friend, that you should properly talk over with me?” At this, she gasped that Mrs. Van Suydam was dreadfully worried. “How do you know?” I demanded. She said, on an even more dying note: “Eva is so attractive to men!” During this interchange, Anthony Bloodgood had said not a word. He had marched purposefully along, and if he had glanced above my head at Gertrude I was not aware of it. He now, however, gave me the impression of mutely taking part in the conversation; for I was sure that he did not subscribe to Gertrude’s statement of Eva’s attraction. What was there of finer perception about Nicholas Van Suydam, that he could appreciate Eva Litchfield? Anthony walked with a stubborn set to his broad shoulders and a forward thrust to his powerful neck; and I wondered for how long Eva could stand opposed to this phalanx of the Van Suydams and their kin. I advanced that I should like to know if Miss Cuyler knew what she was talking about; for how conceivably could she be sure that Mrs. Van Suydam was worried? “Miss Ingoldsby is my aunt,” she said as if this explained the knottiest problems. “I still don’t see----” I said. “I’m not, after all, a New Yorker.” “My aunts are very intimate friends of Mrs. Van Suydam’s; they went to boarding school together, years and years ago,” she expounded as to an idiot. “She talks freely to my aunts. Who else is there for her to talk to about Eva?”