"A little brown mouse, like Mattie," she said, "can easily be content. You are happy as the day is long, are you not, Mattie?"
The quiet brown eyes, with their look of wistful pain, rested for one moment upon Earle, then the young girl said, calmly:
"Certainly I am happy and content. Why should I not be? I always think that the same good God who made me knew how and where to place me, and knew best what I was fitted for."
"There," said Doris, "that is the kind of material your model women are made of. I shall never be a model woman—Mattie will never be anything else."
"Mattie is quite right," said Earle. "There is nothing so vain and so useless as longing for that which we can never attain. Come, Doris, you look better and brighter than you did when I first came in. Tell me all about your day at the Castle."
She told him of the duke's kind reception, of Lady Estelle's condescension, of all the beautiful things she had seen, and how the duke's daughter had given her some flowers, and talked to her. But not one word did she say of Lord Charles Vivianne. It was better, she thought, not even to mention that.
"I am sorry you ever went near the Castle," said Mattie, gravely. "I do not think you will ever be quite the same girl again, and I have a presentiment that in some shape or other evil will come of it."
And Earle, as he heard these words, turned away with a heavy sigh.