became an indispensable associate in all that he was or could
ever hope to be. Alice, who discerned very clearly Mrs. Mavick and her
ambition, was troubled by Philip's absorption and the cruel
disappointment in store for him. To her he was still the little boy, and
all her tenderness for him was stirred to shield him from the suffering
she feared.

But what could she do? Philip liked to talk about Evelyn, to dwell upon
her peculiarities and qualities, to hear her praised; to this extent he
was confidential with his cousin, but never in regard to his own feeling.
That was a secret concerning which he was at once too humble and too
confident to share with any other. None knew better than he the absurd
presumption of aspiring to the hand of such a great heiress, and yet he
nursed the vanity that no other man could ever appreciate and love her as
he did.

Alice was still more distracted and in sympathy with Philip's evident
aspirations by her own love for Evelyn and her growing admiration for the
girl's character. It so happened that mutual sympathy--who can say how
it was related to Philip?--had drawn them much together, and chance had
given them many opportunities for knowing each other. Alice had so far
come out of her shell, and broken the reserve of her life, as to make
frequent visits at the inn, and Mrs. Mavick and Evelyn found it the most
natural and agreeable stroll by the river-side to the farmhouse,
where naturally, while the mother amused herself with the original
eccentricities of Patience, her daughter grew into an intimacy with
Alice.

As for the feelings of Evelyn in these days--her first experience of
something like freedom in the world--the historian has only universal
experience to guide him. In her heart was working the consciousness that
she had been singled out as worthy to share the confidence of a man in
his most secret ambitions and aspirations, in the dreams of youth which
seemed to her so noble. For these aspirations and dreams concerned the
world in which she had lived most and felt most.

If Philip had talked to her as he had to Celia about his plans for
success in life she would have been less interested. But there was
nothing to warn her personally in these unworldly confessions. Nor did
Philip ever seem to ask anything of her except sympathy in his ideas.
And then there was the friendship of Alice, which could not but influence
the girl. In the shelter of that the intercourse of the summ