Mrs. Cockburn saw his eyes turn toward Emily and introduced him. Emily was not blushing now, or apparently interested. She seemed to be simply waiting for her path to be cleared.
“I felt certain it was you,” began young Wayland, a little embarrassed. He made a gesture as if to unbutton his long coat and take something from his inside pocket, then seemed to change his mind. “I’ve a note of introduction to you, that is to your mother—Mrs. Ainslie, you know. But I heard that your mother was ill. And I hesitated about coming.”
“Mother is much better.” Emily was friendly, but not effusive. “I am sure she—both of us—will be glad to see a friend of Mrs. Ainslie.”
She smiled, shook hands with him, gave him a fascinating little nod, submitted to a kiss on the cheek from Mrs. Cockburn and went swiftly and gracefully down the aisle. Wayland looked after her with admiration. He had been in Stoughton three weeks and was profoundly bored.
Mrs. Cockburn was also looking after her, but disapprovingly. “A nice young woman in some ways,” she said. “But she carries her head too high for the plain people here.”
“She’s had a good deal of trouble, I’ve heard,” Wayland answered, not committing himself.
The next morning Mrs. Bromfield got a letter from Mrs. Ainslie. It was of unusual length for Mrs. Ainslie, who was a bird-of-passage that rarely paused long enough for extended communication.
“I never could get used to that big, angular handwriting,” said Mrs. Bromfield to her daughter. “Won’t you read it to me, please?”
Emily began at “My Dear Frances” and read steadily through, finding in the postscript four sentences which should have begun the letter of so worldly-wise a woman: “Don’t on any account let Emily see this. You know how she acted about Bob Fulton. She ought to have learned better by this time, but I don’t trust her. Be careful what you say to her.”
Mrs. Ainslie was urging the opportunity offered by the sojourn of young Wayland in Stoughton. “Emily will have a clear field,” she wrote. “He’s got money in his own right—millions when his father dies—and he’s a good deal of a fool—dissipated, I hear, but in a prudent, business-like way. It’s Emily’s chance for a resurrection.”