“How could she do otherwise? I remember Charlie so well; may I speak of him to her?” said this sympathetic visitor. Verna received this prayer very graciously; she said, “It will do her good;” and now she will have something to amuse her, she added, in her heart. CHAPTER IV. Hepburn amused Mrs. Charles very much, though that was not considered one of his capabilities in Comlie. He roused her gradually from her depressed state into general conversation. After he had delivered Marjory’s message, he stayed and talked, feeling a quite novel excitement and exhilaration in the fact of this social success, which was unprecedented in his experience. To be appreciated is doubly delightful to a man who is not used to much applause from his friends. Matilda was the first pretty woman who had “understood” him, who had permitted herself to be beguiled out of her private sorrows by his agreeable society. He was not the less faithful to Marjory, who had possessed all his thoughts as long as he could remember; but still it was pleasant to be able to comfort the afflicted, and to feel that his efforts for that end were successful. After a while, when the tears had been cleared away, when a gentle smile had stolen upon the fair countenance before him; when she had yielded to his fascination so far as to talk a little, and to listen eagerly, and to look up to him with those blue eyes, Hepburn could not but feel that Miss Heriot must have been deceived somehow, and that so gentle a creature must be easy “to get on with,” to those who would be good to her. For the first time in his life, he felt that there was something to excuse in the idol of his youth. Not a fault, indeed, but a failure of comprehension; and Marjory had never failed before in any particular, so far as her adorer knew. Perhaps the reason was that this gentle little widow was a totally different kind of woman. Various things he had heard on this subject occurred to Hepburn’s mind to account for Marjory’s failure. Women, even the best and cleverest, did sometimes fail to understand each other, he believed, upon points which offered no difficulty to an impartial masculine intellect. This was not at all a disagreeable thought; it raised him vaguely into a pleasant atmosphere of superiority which elated him, and could not hurt anybody. He even seemed to himself to be fonder of Marjory from the sense of elevation over her. Yes, no doubt this was the explanation. Mrs. Charles had done or said something which a man probably would never have noticed, but which had affected the more delicate and sensitive, but less broad and liberal nature of the sweetest of women; and Marjory, on her side, as he knew by experience, uttered words now and then which were not destitute of the power to sting. Hepburn thought that to bring these two together again would be a very fine piece of work for the man who could accomplish it. A loving blue-eyed creature like this could not but cling to Marjory’s strength,