“O God, you have been good to us!” breathed Cornelia’s happy soul as she stood by the window, watching Carey’s broad shoulders and upright carriage as he hurried down the street to the car. Carey was happy. It fairly radiated even from his back, and he walked as if he trod the air. Cornelia was so glad she could have shouted, “Hallelujah!” Now, if he really got this position,—and it looked reasonably sure,—he was established in a good and promising way, and the family could stop worrying about him. What a wonderful young man Maxwell was to take all that trouble for a comparative stranger! Her eyes grew dreamy and her lips softened into a smile as she went over every detail of the evening before, remembering the snatches of talk she had caught and piecing them out with new meaning. She leaned over, and laid her face softly among the roses he had brought, and drew in a long, sweet breath of their fragrance. And he had been doing this for them all the time, and not said a word, lest nothing would come of it. As she thought about it now, she believed he had had the thought about doing something for Carey that first night when he came so unexpectedly to dinner, that dreadful dinner party! How far away and impossible it all seemed now! That terrible girl! What a fool she had been to think it necessary to invite any one like that to the house! If she had just let things go on and take their natural course, Maxwell would have dropped in that night, and they would have had a pleasant time, and all would have been as it was at present, without the mortification of that memory. Carey with his new ambitions and hopes would surely never now disgrace himself by going again with a girl like that. It had been an unnecessary crucifixion for the whole family. Yet they never would have known how splendid Maxwell could be in a trying time without her, perhaps. There was always something comforting somewhere. Still, she would like to be rid of the memory of that evening. It brought shame to her cheek even yet to remember the loud, nasal twang of the cheap voice, the floury face, the low-cut tight little gown, the air of abandon! Oh! It was awful! Then her mind went back to the day she returned from college, and to the sweet-faced, low-voiced woman who was the mother of this new friend. It hardly seemed as if the two belonged to the same world. What would she think if she ever heard of Clytie? Would the young man ever quite forget her, and wipe the memory from his mind so completely that it would never return to shadow those first days of their acquaintance?