"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom I don't know."
"The élite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives there."
Maurice's start was perceptible.
"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said.
Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said, "Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?"
"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street."
"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't seem to want to say what he was doing there!"
"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I went from our office to see the woman who rents the house."
Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?"
Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours (Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To speak of Eleanor offended his taste—but it had to be done. So, stammering, he began—but broke off: