Alice Ashton shrugged her shoulders. “No, I was not thinking of Juliet Temple or any particular case, but she will serve as an example if you like.” Alice appeared entirely undisturbed, although her Camp Fire guardian flushed and looked wounded. Alice was not sensitive and had a fashion of saying what seemed to her the truth without any especial regard for consequences. “Besides, we should all have been glad to have done for you whatever Juliet Temple has done,” Bettina added. “But, my dear girls, you were busy with your own work and studies and I did not feel I had the right to interrupt you nor to allow Aunt Patricia to exhaust herself utterly.” The subject was not an altogether happy one, so there was no further reference to it. A little later Mrs. Burton in the hall of the cabin was distributing the morning mail. Five minutes after she vanished to her own bed-room carrying half a dozen letters. The one from her husband she read immediately, and then without glancing at the others began walking up and down her room, her buoyancy of a short time before departed. By and by she came back to a table where she had thrown the other letters, and picking them up studied the outside of the envelopes with an abstracted air, as if her mind were not intent upon her occupation. Then she tore open a second letter, reading it carelessly at first and afterwards with closer attention. She began walking a second time, with a change of manner and as if she were thinking deeply. Her straight brows became a fairly level line, her blue eyes perceptibly darkened, her lips closed more firmly than usual. At noon there was a knock at her door and Juliet Temple entered. “Please say that I am not coming in to lunch, Juliet, and bring me something to eat here. If possible, as I expect to be busy, I’d rather not be disturbed this afternoon.” Mrs. Burton had but scant hope of Miss Patricia’s observing her wish and yet the entire afternoon passed and no one came near her. Nevertheless, she did not appear to be seriously occupied during the earlier part of the afternoon. Instead she sat for an hour before her fire with her hands tightly clasped. Afterwards, drawing her writing table toward her, she wrote a short note which she placed in an envelope and addressed to her husband. The second note was longer and oddly enough addressed to Miss Patricia Lord, who at present moment was not many yards away. But this letter Mrs. Burton placed inside her bureau drawer, and then fell to packing a small suitcase which she afterwards hid away in a closet. She went in to supper and sat talking an hour or more in the living-room with the Camp Fire girls, but asked to be excused early in the evening and again retired to her own bed-room. She was undressing to put on a tea-gown when the door opened and in walked Miss Patricia looking uncommonly severe.