Scalding tears rushed to her eyes and she crimsoned with mortification. She had liked the kind New Yorker so much that she hated for him to believe her mean and dishonest.
A bright thought came into her mind and she seized a pen and wrote rapidly on a slip of paper:
“If the gentleman who paid a young girl’s fare on the train going to Clarksburg will send his address to Miss Groves, Weston, stating the amount paid, he will receive the money at once, with the thanks of the one benefited.”
“I called myself Miss Groves because he called me that,” she thought; “and now if dear Doctor Bertrand will lend me enough money to pay for this advertisement I will pay the nice gentleman as soon as I begin to earn a salary here. I should like to see the kind stranger again some time.”
She made up her mind to work on at the asylum patiently until some better opening presented itself, and she would be so distant and dignified with the superintendent he would not presume on her poverty again to offer her a love that was a cruel insult.
But her cheeks were burning, and she trembled like a leaf when she entered his office next morning to be assigned to her ward. Her spirits rose the minute she saw Miss Blue looking over the newspapers, and she knew she would not be alone with him.
The doctor was curt and cold. He looked her over as though she were a stranger, and dismissed her with a few sharp orders. But she did not mind; she was only too glad to escape.
She could not guess at the mingled rage and love seething in his undisciplined heart. It was his misfortune that he could never resist a fair face. He was like a butterfly, roving from flower to flower, culling sweets wherever he could. To Miss Blue he remarked, with fine sarcasm:
“Such a shy, trembling little birdie; one would never take her for the heroine of a terrible scandal, would they, my dear Mattie?”
She flashed her keen black eyes at him, shrugged her shoulders, and retorted poutingly: