"It would be hard to resist the temptation to hear anything about dear old Mr. Eltinge," said Ida, taking the artist's arm, and feeling as if she were being swept away on a shining tide.
"You WERE glad to see me, Miss Mayhew, and you can't deny it," Van
Berg began exultantly.
"You almost crushed my hand, and it aches still," was her demure reply.
"Well, that was surely the wound of a friend."
"You are very good to speak to me at all, after all that's happened," she said in a low tone and with downcast face.
"What a strange coincidence! That is exactly what I was thinking of you. I almost feared you would treat me as you did Sibley. How much good it did me to see him slinking away like a whipped cur! I never realized before how perfectly helpless even brazen villainy is in the presence of womanly dignity."
"Why, were you present then?" she asked, with a quick blush.
"Not exactly present, but I saw your face and his, and a stronger contrast I scarcely expect to see again."
"You artists look at everything and everybody as pictures."
"Now, Miss Mayhew, you are growing severe again. I don't carry the shop quite as far as that, and I have not been looking at you as a picture at all this evening. I shall make known the whole enormity of my offence, and the if I must follow Sibley, I must, but I shall carry with me a little shred of your respect for telling the truth. I had a faint hope that you and your father would come to-night, and I was looking for you, and when you came I watched you. I could not resist the temptation of comparing the Miss Mayhew I now so highly esteem and respect, with the lady I first met at this place."