During the next few days she was destined to feel this change in her position repeatedly. If the news of her engagement to an "eligible" man had spread rapidly, the announcement of the disaster to her engagement seemed miraculously immediate. She had just begun with her grandmother's help to prepare to return her engagement gifts, as her grandmother insisted was the proper thing to do, when in rushed the Norton girls, quite breathless. Sally greeted her with a jovial laugh. "So you've dropped him! I told Ted, Milly would never stand for those balcony seats!" She rippled with laughter at the humor of the situation. Milly, revived by her attitude, related the cab and car incidents. "He was--horrid." "They're all like that, those New Englanders--afraid to spend their money," Sally commented lightly. Vivie took the sentimental view. "Your heart was never in it, dear," she said consolingly. "Of course it wasn't--I never pretended it was!" "That sort of thing can't last." Milly, now quite reassured, gave a drole imitation of Clarence Albert's last remarks,--"She doesn't love me, Mrs. Ridge--Milly doesn't really love me!" She trilled the words mischievously. Sally roared with pleasure. Vivie said, "Of course you couldn't marry him--not that!" And Milly felt that she was right. No, she could not do _that_: she had been true to herself, true to her feelings,--woman's first duty,--a little late, to be sure. * * * * * But a full realization of her situation did not come until she appeared in public. Then she began to understand what she had done in discarding her suitable fiancé. Nettie Gilbert hardly invited her to sit when she called. She said severely:-- "Yes, Clarence told me all about it. He feels very badly. It was very frivolous of you, Milly. I should not have _thought it possible_." She treated Milly as the one soul saved who, after being redeemed, had fled the flock. Milly protested meekly, "But I didn't care for him, Nettie, not the least little bit." Mrs. Gilbert, who remembered her Roy, replied severely, "At least you ought to have known your own mind before this." "He _is_ mean," Milly flared. "And you are rather extravagant, I'm afraid, my dear!" That relation ended there, at least its pleasant intimacy. And so it went from house to house, especially among the settled married folk, who regarded Milly as inconceivably foolish and silly. Who was she to be so scrupulous about her precious heart? Even the younger, unmarried sort had a knowing and disapproving look on their faces when she met them. As for the stream of invitations, there was a sudden drought, as of a parched desert, and the muteness of the telephone after its months of perpetual twinkle was simply ghastly.