eyfield,' he said, with great
gravity, 'I fear I have unintentionally compromised you very seriously.
In advising you to take this house, and open it for boarders, I was
governed entirely by what I conceived to be your best interests; but it
seems that I erred in my judgment. You are very young--only
twenty-three, I believe, and--I beg your pardon--too beautiful to pass
unnoticed in a community like this. Your boarders, so far, are all
gentlemen. Further, it has been noticed and commented upon that--really,
I do not know how to express it--that _I_ have seemed to take the place
in your household that--pray, forgive me, Mrs. Greyfield--only a
husband, in fact or in expectancy, could be expected or permitted to
occupy. Do you see what I mean?'

"I sat stunned and speechless while he went on. 'I presume your good
sense will direct you in this matter, and that you will grasp the right
horn of the dilemma. If you would allow me to help you out of it, you
would really promote my happiness. Dear Mrs. Greyfield, permit me to
offer you the love and protection of a husband, and stop these gossips'
mouths.'"

"You do not think he had premeditated this?" I asked.

"I did not take it in then, but afterwards I saw it plainly enough. He
pressed me for an answer, all the time plausibly protesting that
although he had hoped some time to win my love, he had not anticipated
the necessity for urging his suit as a matter of expediency. In vain I
argued that if his presence in the house was an injury to me, he could
leave it. It was too late, he said. I indignantly declared that it was
not my fault that my boarders were all men. I was working for my living,
and would just as willingly have boarded any other creature if I could
have got my money for it; a monkey or a sheep; it was all the same to
me. He smiled superiorly on my fretfulness; and when I at last burst
into a passion of tears, bade me good night with such an air of being
extremely forbearing and judicious that I could not help regarding
myself as a foolish and undisciplined child.

"That night I scarcely slept at all. Benton was feverish, and I half
wild. All sorts of plans ran through my head; but turn the matter over
any way I would, it amounted to the same thing. The money I must earn,
must come from men. Whether I sewed or cooked, or whatever I did, they
were the paymasters to whom I looked for my wages. How, then, was it
possible to escape contact with them, or avoid bein