character, with a powerful will under perfect control. I grew to have so
much confidence in him that I thought his coming would somehow be a
benefit to Grace, though I could not see how; in fact, when I tried to
reason about it, I told myself exactly the contrary. But Phil seemed to
have such implicit confidence in himself, to be so self-sufficient and
so ready for any emergency, and altogether such a perfect man of action,
that he inspired belief and confidence in others.

"We met Herbert on our way up from the station: he was standing in front
of the 'Gazette' office, laughing and talking with Sudden's barkeeper.
He greeted Phil with cordiality, in spite of the latter's distant
bearing, and told him Grace would be greatly pleased at his arrival.

"'I suppose she will be glad to see me,' said Phil, as we passed on. And
she was glad, very glad, to see him, but she was far from being made
happy by his coming. I sent a note out to her, and Phil and I followed
shortly after. I did not watch their meeting,--I thought, somehow, that
no one ought to see it,--but I knew he took her in his arms; and when
she came out on the porch to bring me in there were tears in her eyes.

"We all sat and talked for a long while, Grace with her hand in Phil's
and her eyes on his face, when she was not looking anxiously after my
awkward attempts at caring for her baby; for of course Nannie had been
brought out almost the first thing. I think, from the way in which she
carefully avoided asking him his reasons for coming back, that she
divined what they were. I imagined that she blamed me as being the prime
cause; but there was nothing I could say to undeceive her. In fact, I
thought it better for her to believe so than to know the truth.

"'She is miserably unhappy, George,' said Phil gloomily, as we walked
away. 'But you were right not to tell me. I can do nothing to help her:
I cannot even openly sympathize with her. It would have been better to
have kept on thinking she was happy: there was a bitter kind of
satisfaction to me in that, but still it was a satisfaction.'

"Nevertheless Phil did not go back to the mountains. He stayed on here
for a month or more, dividing his time pretty equally between my office
and Grace's little parlor. He very seldom met Herbert. Now and then they
would be together at the cottage for half an hour, if Herbert happened
to come home while he was there, and when they met on the street they
would merely pass