Evelyn got up from her seat in the horror of the thought that thus came into her mind, and with the sensation that she must do something at once to put an end to it. But nobody even remarked her movement, and she sat down again with a pant of baffled eagerness. Rosamond and Archie sat with their backs to her, full of their own subject: the dull boy was awakening under that siren’s touch; while Marion and Eddy kept up a deafening chatter about something much more interesting than the mountains or waters--themselves; each moving on the lines that answered best. Was the plan laid out in all its details? Had they come with their constructions to captivate these two homely Rowlands before the other harpies had so much as got note of them, to anticipate all competition? It was just such a heartless scheme as he might have conceived in his unsoftened, unchastened suffering. And Madeline Leighton’s words came back upon Evelyn’s mind with a sudden horror: “He will compromise you, if he can, with your husband.” How angry she had been, thinking only of the ordinary sense of these words. Ah! here was another sense--a sense she had never dreamt of! If Eddy Saumarez with his bad little record, his short story of as much folly as could be crammed into a life of twenty, asked Marion’s father for her hand and fortune--and Archie, with the power of sullen opposition which was in him, proclaimed his intention of marrying Rosamond, to whom would her husband turn as the cause of these premature engagements? Who would be blamed by the world? Would any one believe that she had not thought of such a contingency? Would James----James, whose soul trusted in her? Oh, villain and traitor! was this his way of punishing her for having escaped from his influence, for the late happiness that had made her so much better off than he was? Madeline’s warning had not been strong enough or clear enough to save her. Evelyn clasped her hands in her lap till the pressure hurt her, and looked on helpless at the work which was going so briskly on at her side, the work which she would be believed to have planned--with eyes which could scarcely endure the sight.