After exerting myself to seem exceedingly cheerful, and laughing heartily at a well-worn jest of Mr. Hearn's, I went to my room and rested till dinner, and I slept away the afternoon as on the previous day.
My plan was now to get sufficiently strong to take my departure by the following Monday, and I was glad indeed that the tonic of out-of-door air promised an escape from a position in which I must continually seem to be what I was not—a cheerful man in the flood tide of convalescence. Were it not that my kind friends at the farmhouse would have been grievously hurt, I would have left at once.
As I returned from my ride the next day, Mr. Hearn greeted me with a newspaper in his hand.
"I'm indebted to you," he said, in his most gracious manner, "for a very kindly mention here. So small a donation was not worth the importance you give it, but you have put the matter so happily and gracefully that it may lead other men of means to do likewise at the various places of their summer sojourn. You editors are able to wield a great deal of influence."
I bowed, and said I was glad the paragraph had been worded in a way not disagreeable to him.
"Oh, it was good taste itself, I assure you, sir. It seemed the natural expression of your interest in that which interests your good friends here."
When I came down to dinner I saw that there was an unwonted fire in Miss Warren's eyes and unusual color in her cheeks. Moreover, I imagined that her replies to the few remarks that I addressed to her were brief and constrained. "She is no dissembler," I thought; "something has gone wrong."
After dinner I went to my room for a book, and as I came out I met her in the hall.
"Mr. Morton," she said, with characteristic directness, "if you had given a sum toward a good object in a quiet country place, would you have been pleased to see the fact paraded before those having no natural interest in the matter?"
"I have never had the power to be munificent, Miss Warren," I replied, with some embarrassment.