Living, as he did, as one of Caretall’s family, he was thrown constantly with Agnes; and the girl put herself out to please him. She and old Maria Hale worked together in this. The girl discovered Wint’s favorite dishes, and Maria produced them and brought them to a perfection that Wint had never known. It was Agnes’ task to take care of the dusting and housework; and she began, after a time, to put an occasional cluster of flowers from the greenhouses next door in his room. When they talked together, she deferred to him with a pretty fashion of tilting her head and widening her serious eyes that he found exceedingly attractive. It stimulated his self-respect; and at the same time it gave him a new respect for her. Since she so obviously approved of him, there must be more to her than he had supposed. She was, he decided, a person of judgment. He had always thought her a giddy little thing with a brisk, gay tongue and laughing eyes. He found in her an unexpected capacity for silence and for attention. She encouraged him to talk about himself, about his plans; she sympathized with him, and advised him when he asked her advice. They became surprisingly good friends. She suggested, one evening, that they telephone Jack Routt to bring Joan for a game of cards. Wint shook his head; and the girl, without asking questions, made her curiosity so obvious that Wint told her that Joan had cast him off. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and fingers intertwined, staring idly into the fire, while he told her; and the girl leaned back in her chair and listened and studied him, and when he finished she laid her hand lightly on his arm. “It’s a shame, Wint,” she said. Wint shook his head. “Oh--she was right!” “She wasn’t right. She ought to have stuck by you, and helped you fight it out.” Wint thought so too, and his respect for Agnes rose. But he said insistently: “No, she was right.” Agnes patted his arm, and then leaned back in her chair again. “It’s fine of you to think so,” she said. One night Wint asked her to go uptown with him to the moving-picture theater. She was delighted, and she was gay as a cricket on the way. At the entrance of the theater, they came face to face with Jack Routt and Joan. Wint felt his cheeks burn. Agnes greeted the other two with a burst of rapid chatter that covered the awkward moment. Routt studied Wint, and Joan nodded to him without speaking. Then Routt and Joan went inside, and Wint and Agnes sat three rows behind them.