“Oh, I don’t defend her intimacy with the Gormers; but that too is at an end now, I think. You know people have been very unkind since Bertha Dorset quarrelled with her.” “Ah——” Selden exclaimed, rising abruptly to walk to the window, where he remained with his eyes on the darkening street while his cousin continued to explain: “Judy Trenor and her own family have deserted her too—and all because Bertha Dorset has said such horrible things. And she is very poor—you know Mrs. Peniston cut her off with a small legacy, after giving her to understand that she was to have everything.” “Yes—I know,” Selden assented curtly, turning back into the room, but only to stir about with restless steps in the circumscribed space between door and window. “Yes—she’s been abominably treated; but it’s unfortunately the precise thing that a man who wants to show his sympathy can’t say to her.” His words caused Gerty a slight chill of disappointment. “There would be other ways of showing your sympathy,” she suggested. Selden, with a slight laugh, sat down beside her on the little sofa which projected from the hearth. “What are you thinking of, you incorrigible missionary?” he asked. Gerty’s colour rose, and her blush was for a moment her only answer. Then she made it more explicit by saying: “I am thinking of the fact that you and she used to be great friends—that she used to care immensely for what you thought of her—and that, if she takes your staying away as a sign of what you think now, I can imagine its adding a great deal to her unhappiness.” “My dear child, don’t add to it still more—at least to your conception of it—by attributing to her all sorts of susceptibilities of your own.” Selden, for his life, could not keep a note of dryness out of his voice; but he met Gerty’s look of perplexity by saying more mildly: “But, though you immensely exaggerate the importance of anything I could do for Miss Bart, you can’t exaggerate my readiness to do it—if you ask me to.” He laid his hand for a moment on hers, and there passed between them, on the current of the rare contact, one of those exchanges of meaning which fill the hidden reservoirs of affection. Gerty had the feeling that he measured the cost of her request as plainly as she read the significance of his reply; and the sense of all that was suddenly clear between them made her next words easier to find.