Marie-Aimée came to disdain, as paltry praise, the definition "very fine girl" which one was accustomed to hear joined to the name of Kate Cheriton. Smiting her brow, aghast, at the recollection of an appointment missed, Marie-Aimée jumped to her feet. By running she might still be in time to apologize. They shook hands again, warmly; and Marie-Aimée said, all her heart in her voice, "I hope you will be very happy." In the street, Marie-Aimée, as she hurried along, could think of nothing but Miss Cheriton. She would send her as a wedding-gift the French great-grandmother's rococo cross, the choicest bit of jewelry she owned. Her heart might have been so much dusty, worm-eaten wood; remarking its astonishing lightness and insensibility, she reverted in thought, almost flippantly, to the horrors besetting her when she left home that morning. Surely, if it were possible that with Tony's marriage brought as close as a visit to his intended brought it, she should feel as she felt, she might still hope to put on a good face about it to the world. In this mood she went about a good part of that day; and talked to some with so much of a return to her old spirit that they disguised their surprise by a greater cheerfulness than really their mystification allowed them to feel. Meeting an old acquaintance who put on the face of a sympathizer to say, "My dear, I _did_ feel for you when I heard of his engagement, you know whose I mean," she looked as if not sure she understood; and the old aquaintance, after a searching look at her, dropped her mournfulness, to proceed, "It seems to be a fine thing for Bronson, this marriage. I hear that Miss Cheriton will be a millionaire. People exaggerate, you think? But she _has_ bought a superb place out of town?" By the late afternoon, that curious, unseasonable, baseless good cheer was wearing off, like the effects of wine, and the world, through its fading fumes, was returning to look like the world of yesterday. Weariness was overtaking her; but her heart had not recommenced its clamorous aching; it was only a little sick, when she went into a music-store for a score she needed. She was looking this over, with her eyes rather than her mind, when her attention became fixed in memory upon that expression of Miss Cheriton's face from which she had judged her mission successful--Tony cleared. Suddenly, as in the middle of the night she had sometimes known that in a letter sent off there was a word misspelled, she felt that triumph of confidence in Miss Cheriton's eyes not to have been the work of her own explanations. She herself had been fully explained to Miss Cheriton before ever she set foot in her house. How could it have been otherwise?