"Poor Benefactor!" she said. "I know how difficult your path must be sometimes! Of course, I shall be only too glad to be your almoner. I know Mrs. Thompson a little, and my visits will be beyond any suspicions or surmises."
"Thank you," the Colonel said heartily, and then for the next half-hour, he sat talking over his various protégés and plans for befriending the needy and destitute.
Miss Lorraine listened and advised, and when he went at last, sat back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh and smile.
"Doughty," she said, caressing her dog, "Platonic friendship is possible, when it is deep and real."
Then she sat dreamily gazing into the fire, and her thoughts went back to another autumn day about ten years before, when she and Colonel Douglas had been standing together in the firelight alone. He had pleaded very earnestly, and all the sunshine in her life seemed to slip away, when she told him it could not be. She gave him no reasons; a delicate mother who had taken an unreasonable dislike to the Colonel had come between them. Her duty as a devoted daughter came first, and Colonel Douglas, with the extreme diffidence of his nature, took his dismissal as final. He went abroad to get over it, and returned a quiet grave man, who after a few interviews with her, slipped into the role of an old family friend. She had kept her friend, but lost her lover.
[CHAPTER VI]
DISILLUSION
"To know the world, not love her is thy point:
She gives but little, nor that little long."
WINTER passed. Jean studied hard at her beloved art, spending her leisure time in seeing her various friends and being initiated into Bohemian society. Miss Lorraine did not often interfere with her. Jean was intolerant of any criticism on her friends, but once Miss Lorraine seriously remonstrated.
"Jean," she said, "who was that man you were walking with, when I met you out to-day?"