,
and she the most unnatural of all--as if she were clinging temporarily
to a ledge in mid-air, waiting for the next thing to happen.

Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held
back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt.
She couldn't understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself
to get into an equivocal position with such a man--"really not a
gentleman," as she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the
vague remark that you could never tell about a girl; even in its
vagueness the reply was condemning.

The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously
questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich
bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another
visitor was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her
hostess was absorbed.

Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory
counting on the sympathy that had helped her before; but she had been
unfortunate in the times for her visits. On the first occasion Mrs.
Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard; and on
the second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in
weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the
innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually,
for the day, to set out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a
very serious thing when you have a man hired by the day, who must be
looked after every minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs.
Snow remarked, "People ought to know when to come and when not to."
Dosia got no farther than the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her
to come again, and gave her a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind
little pressure of the hand, she was not asked to sit down.

Your trouble wasn't anybody else's trouble, no matter how kind people
were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her
devoted cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and
giving her a curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own
reasons therefor. It would have hurt her, if anything of that kind
could have hurt her very much. But Dosia was in the half-numb
condition which may result from some great blow or the fall from a
great height, save for those moments when she was anguished suddenly
by poignant memories of sharpest dagger-thrusts, at which her heart
still bled unbearably afresh, as when one rem