"Forgive me, Ida, I will try to do better by you though I fear I shall prove one of Job's comforters. We'll stop in the village, get some supper there, and, thus you won't have to face anybody to-night, and by to-morrow you will be your own brave self."
"Oh," moaned Ida, "I am almost as sorry for father's sake as for my own. How can I keep him up when I am sinking myself?"
Mr. Mayhew stood on the piazza, waiting for Ida and wondering why she did not come, as Van Berg mounted the steps. The majority of the people had gone in to supper, but Miss Burton, who was a little late, recognized him from the hallway, and she came swiftly out to greet him. Her very cordiality was another stab, and he exerted the whole power of his manhood to meet her in like spirit.
"I did not know I should miss you so much," she said, her eyes growing a little moist from her strong feeling. "I suppose we never value our friends as we ought till taught their worth to us by absence. But if you have been successful in your work I shall be well content."
"Yes, Miss Jennie," he replied, "I think I have been successful. The picture is far from being complete, but I've been able to obtain a much better likeness of Mr. Eltinge than I even hoped to catch."
"Mr. Van Berg, you have been working too hard. You look exceedingly weary. What possessed you to walk all these miles? Leave us women to do the unreasonable things, and least of all are they becoming in you; come at once and get a good supper."
He could not disguise the pain and humiliation that her words caused him, and said hurriedly, "I will join you in a few moments," and then hastened to his room.
Mr. Mayhew, with the delicacy of a gentleman, had withdrawn out of earshot as they conversed, but the warmth of Miss Burton's greeting had suggested a thought that was exceedingly disquieting. As if from a sudden impulse he went directly to the supper table, and his quiet courtesy masked the closest observation.
Van Berg stood in his room a moment and fairly trembled with shame and rage at himself. Then, with a bitter imprecation, he made the brief toilet the dust of his walk required, and his face was so stern and white one might think he was about to face an executioner instead of Jennie Burton's blue eyes beaming with friendship at least. The thought of discovering anything warmer in their expression sent a mortal chill to her former wooer's heart. He expected to meet Ida at the table, and the ordeal of meeting the woman to whom he was pledged in the presence of the woman he loved was like the ancient Trial by Fire.
"Curse it all," he muttered, "they both can read one's thoughts as if they were printed on sign-boards. I was scarcely conscious of what my ardent friendship for Miss Mayhew meant before she looked me in the face and saw the whole truth, and she almost the same as charged me with winning Jennie Burton's heart then throwing it away, while in the same breath she hinted that I need not attempt any such folly and meanness in her case. If ever a man's pride and self-respect received a mortal wound mine has to-day. And now I feel with instinctive certainty, that Miss Burton will see the truth just as clearly, and then my burden for life will be the contempt of the two women whom I honor as I do my mother's name. Well, there is no help for it now, my ship is on the rocks already."