s Fairport afforded. Mrs.
Goodward saw to that, and there were two or three whom he had met at the
Lessings' as well as men to whom the figure of his income was the cachet
of eligibility. It wasn't indeed that he wasn't liked, and that quite at
his proper worth, but that he couldn't somehow manage it so that the
Best Society cared in the least whether he liked it. He could see, in a
way, where Clarice had been at work for him; but the poison that was
dropped in his cup was the certainty that the way for him had to be
"worked." The discovery that he couldn't just find his way to Eunice
Goodward's side by the same qualities that had placed him beside the
males of her circle in point of property and power, that he couldn't
without admission to that circle, properly court her, hemmed him in
bewilderingly.

Her method of eluding him, if there were method in it, left him feeling
not so much avoided as prevented by the moves of a game he hadn't meant
to play. So greatly it irked his natural simplicity to be banded about
by the social observances of the place, that it might have led him to
irrecoverable mistakes had it not been for the hand held out to him by
Mrs. Goodward.

He perceived on closer acquaintance, that this lady's fine serenity of
manner was due largely to her never admitting to her mind the upsetting
possibility. She thought her world into acceptable shape and held it
there by the simple process of ignoring the eccentricities of its axis.

Peter would have admired, if his unsophistication had allowed him, the
facility with which she made it revolve now about their mutual pursuit
of Eunice through the rattle and cheapness of what was known as "the
Burton Henderson set." As it was against just such social inconsequence
that Peter felt himself strong to defend her, he fell easily into the
key of crediting the girl's sudden, bewildering flight to it as a mere
midsummer madness.

"It's the way with girls, I fancy," Mrs. Goodward had said to him,
strolling up and down the hotel veranda where through the wide French
windows they had glimpses of Eunice whirling away on the ice polished
floor of the ballroom within; "they cling the more to gayety as they see
the graver things of life bearing down upon them."

"You think she sees that?"

"Ah, there's much a mother sees, Mr. Weatheral----"

"You would, of course," he accepted.

"It's a woman's part, seeing; there's an instinct in us not to see too
soon." She gave