No one had believed in him! Dosia caught at the confirmation as a ray of light gilding this dark and slimy morass, the sight of which had unexpectedly revolted her. In Balderville only the lower class of inhabitants drank; no young man of respectability or position was to be seen among them. But was not this the very kind of trial of her through which she had promised to have faith? He had not posed as devoid of offense; on the contrary, he had confessed to guilt, only she had not quite understood. Sin as plain sin shows a glazed surface, quite decently presentable; it is only when it is particularized that the monstrosities below are hideously revealed. “It must be a great grief to you,” she said now, with earnestness. “Yes, it is. Mr. Leverich says I shall not have so much on my mind after this winter; he has put his foot down. The nights I have passed! I’m always fancying that he is run over, or has fallen from the ferry-boat; it’s the most dreadful strain. James, we are to stop for the ice-cream on the way back—don’t forget; and those cakes at Mrs. Springer’s—they were ordered yesterday. Where was I? I forget. Oh, yes—the most dreadful strain! and I felt that I ought to speak about him to you, as you are staying under my care, and yet I hated to. But, of course, after the disturbance, I knew that it was nonsense to try and keep up a pretense any longer. You can see just what he is yourself.” “Yes, indeed,” said Dosia, grown big-eyed and silent. Her hostess insisted on her drinking a large cup of hot bouillon on her return, she looked so pale and chilly, relighted the logs in Dosia’s room with her own fat, white, beringed hands, and enveloped the girl enthusiastically several times in a large and perfumed embrace, in confirmation of her new position as a daughter. Dosia was dainty about the manifestations of affection; though she was intensely responsive in spirit to the least show of it, material demonstrations were unnatural to her; she was shy of being touched even by her own sex. It was only with little children that the exuberance of her feeling poured forth in caresses. That the hand-clasp the night of the disaster had appealed so strongly to her imagination was partly because of the fact that the comfort it conveyed transcended the strangeness of contact. To be pressed now to a warm, semimaternal bosom covered with voluminous folds of mauve velvet and lace gave her only an embarrassed gratitude, which she felt, guiltily, as being far from adequate to the occasion. And she was weary of trying to elude the vacillations of her mind. She would keep her promise to Lawson,—yes, yes, indeed! a hundred times more, the more he needed it,—but she would be very careful, too; she would be _very_ careful. A hundred tiny defenses seemed to spring into being.