His sister demurred. "I do not know that it is such a bad business for Uncle Richard to have gained such a devoted nurse. He needs it now. As for Miss Bryant, I pitied the girl, cooped up there in that lonely, monotonous village, and begged Mrs. Van Tassel to allow her to stay with me a week or two. She consented very willingly, even gladly. I wanted to give people a chance to look at her. I'm a philanthropist. The sight of her will do a weakly person as much good as the sea air; and she was"—
A knock at the door interrupted. Mrs. Page gave her brother a knowing little nod, and when she answered the call, it was her guest who entered. The girl had exchanged her black dress for one all white.
"You told me to come as soon as I was ready," she said, looking from one to the other.
"Yes, I was in haste to have you see my view. Isn't it a fine one?"
Mildred moved to the window, followed by Page's unconscious, openly admiring gaze. He had risen at once upon her entrance and stood, his hands resting on a chair-back, forgiving Mrs. Van Tassel's arts for the moment, in entire approval of her sister's appearance.
Hilda, to whom her brother-in-law's potential love affairs were a constant entertainment, kept his ingenuous face in view, even while her tongue rattled on.
"For a conscientious, well-intentioned man," she had once said to her husband, "Gorham Page can be the most dangerous creature. Any girl receiving such a look as his would believe him deeply smitten. Then he will go on, getting acquainted with her in his way, inquiring into her thoughts and opinions, even probing her hidden feelings, getting at the real woman, as he calls it, and having exchanged theories with her for a while, his mind will go mooning off, perhaps in the test of some new thought she has suggested, while the girl, gradually neglected, is soon as entirely forgotten as last year's fashions. It amounts to unprincipled flirting, and yet he doesn't suspect it in the least. He is too modest, really. A queer paradox."
Hilda suddenly finished the description of a distant lighthouse, and turning, walked straight up to her brother, who was still lost in critical approval of the noble lines and curves of her guest's tall figure.
"But come," she said, smiling with significant sauciness into his face. "We cannot live entirely on the beautiful things we can take in through our eyes. I fancy there is some dinner downstairs somewhere."
"Yes," agreed Page, stirring. He had finished his soup before he realized that there had been any personal intention in her speech.