"Oh, _do_ stop!" Elizabeth said. Blair got up from the piano-stool and came over to them silently. His thoughts were in clamoring confusion. "I am _not_," he said again to himself. "I like her, but that's all." There was a look of actual panic on his lazily charming face. He glanced at Elizabeth, who, her head on Nannie's shoulder, was humming softly: "'Oh, won't it be joyful--joyful-joyful--'" and clenched his hands. He was very silent as he walked home with her that night. When they reached her door, Elizabeth looked up at the closed shutters of Mrs. Richie's house, and sighed. "How dreary a closed house looks!" she said. "I almost wish Uncle would rent it, but he won't. _I_ think he is keeping it for Mrs. Richie to live in when David and I settle down in Philadelphia." Blair was apparently not interested in Mrs. Richie's future. "I wish," he said, "that I'd gone to Europe this summer." "Well, that's polite, considering that Nannie and I have spent our time making it agreeable for you." "I stayed in Mercer because I thought I'd like a summer with Nannie," he defended himself; he was just turning away at the foot of the steps, but he stopped and called back: "with Nannie-_and you."_ Elizabeth, from the open door, looked after him with frank astonishment. "How long since Nannie and I have been so much appreciated?" "I think I began to appreciate you a good while ago, Elizabeth," he said, significantly; but she did not hear him. "Perhaps it's just as well she's going," he told himself, as he went slowly back to the hotel. "Not that I'm smitten; but I might be. I can see that I might be, if I should let myself go." But he was confident that allegiance to his god would keep him from ever letting himself go. The girls went East that week, and when they did, Blair took no more meals in the office-dining-room.