word.

"This is ended." And then, with a slight change of manner, she went on:
"You must see how impossible it is. You are a man of honor.

"I should like to think well of you. I shall trust to your honor that
you will never try, by letter or otherwise, to hold any communication
with her."

"I shall obey you," said Philip, quite stiffly, "because you are her
mother. But I love her, and I shall always love her."

Mrs. Mavick did not condescend to any reply to this, but she made a cold
bow of dismissal and turned away from him. He left the house and walked
away, scarcely knowing in which direction he went, anger for a time being
uppermost in his mind, chagrin and defeat following, and with it the
confused feeling of a man who has passed through a cyclone and been
landed somewhere amid the scattered remnants of his possessions.

As he strode away he was intensely humiliated. He had been treated like
an inferior. He had voluntarily put himself in a position to be
insulted. Contempt had been poured upon him, his feelings had been
outraged, and there was no way in which he could show his resentment.
Presently, as his anger subsided, he began to look at the matter more
sanely. What had happened? He had made an honorable proposal. But what
right had he to expect that it would be favorably considered?
He knew all along that it was most unlikely that Mrs. Mavick would
entertain for a moment idea of such a match. He knew what would be the
unanimous opinion of society about it. In the case of any other young
man aspiring to the hand of a rich girl, he knew very well what he should
have thought.

Well, he had done nothing dishonorable. And as he reviewed the bitter
interview he began to console himself with the thought that he had not
lost his temper, that he had said nothing to be regretted, nothing that
he should not have said to the mother of the girl he loved. There was an
inner comfort in this, even if his life were ruined.

Mrs. Mavick, on the contrary, had not so good reason to be satisfied with
herself. It was a principle of her well-ordered life never to get into a
passion, never to let herself go, never to reveal herself by intemperate
speech, never to any one, except occasionally to her husband when his
cold sarcasm became intolerable. She felt, as soon as the door closed on
Philip, that she had made a blunder, and yet in her irritation she
committed a worse one. She went at once to Evelyn's room, resolved to
ma