For once in his life Mr. Cuthbert felt ashamed of himself. He did not feel comfortable all through dessert, and gave a sigh of relief when the ladies left the room. As for Erica's other neighbor, he could not help reflecting that Luke Raeburn's daughter had had the best of it in the encounter. And he wondered a little that a man, whom he had known to do many a kindly action, should so completely have forgotten the rules of ordinary courtesy. CHAPTER XXVI. A Friend Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us; but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say. And therefore you begin in error when you suggest that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.--Plato. In the drawing room Erica found the ostracism even more complete and more embarrassing. Lady Caroline who was evidently much annoyed, took not the slightest notice of her, but was careful to monopolize the one friendly looking person in the room, a young married lady in pale-blue silk. The other ladies separated into groups of two and threes, and ignored her existence. Lady Caroline's little girl, a child of twelve, was well bred enough to come toward her with some shy remark, but her mother called her to the other side of the room quite sharply, and made some excuse to keep her there, as if contact with Luke Raeburn's daughter would have polluted her. A weary half hour passed. Then the door opened, and the gentlemen filed in. Erica, half angry, half tired, and wholly miserable, was revolving in her brain some stinging sentences for her article when the beautiful face again checked her. Her “Roman,” as she called him, had come in, and was looking round the room, apparently searching for some one. At last their eyes met, and, with a look which said as plainly as words: “Oh, there you are! It was you I wanted,” he came straight towards her. “You must forgive me, Miss Raeburn, for dispensing with an introduction,” he said; “but I hardly think we shall need any except the name of our mutual fried, Charles Osmond.” Erica's heart gave a bound. The familiar name, the consciousness that her wretched loneliness was at an end, and above all, the instantaneous perception of the speaker's nobility and breadth of mind, scattered for the time all her resentful thoughts made her again her best self. “Then you must be Donovan!” she exclaimed, with the quaint and winsome frankness which was one of her greatest charms. “I knew I was sure you were not like other people.” He took her hand in his, and no longer wondered at Brian's seven years' hopeless waiting. But Erica began to realize that her exclamation had been appallingly unconventional, and the beautiful color deepened in her cheeks.