"I'm glad of some refreshment!" said the doctor; "butterflies cannot live on the wing. Linden! have you been singing all the evening, in the character of a midge?"
"No," said Mr. Linden—"all the singing I have done has been in my own character."
"I am glad to hear it. By the way," said Dr. Harrison as they reached the supper-room and paired off from their respective charges,—"I am sorry to hear that Pattaquasset has no hold on you, Linden."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Linden,—an "indeed" which might refer to the doctor's sorrow, or the supposed fact.
"Nay I know nothing about it!" said the doctor lightly as he attacked the supper-table—"but Miss Derrick tells me it is true that your heart is in another place."
"Dr. Harrison!" Mr. Linden said, with a momentary erectness of position. But he said no more; turning off then towards Faith with her oysters. And the gentle respect and quick attention with which she was served, Faith might feel, and take note of—yet not guess that its peculiar tone this night was warring, hand to hand, with the injustice done her name. The doctor had unwittingly betrayed at least one point of talk held over the Rhododendrons—furnished a clue he dreamed not of; and stirred a power of displeasure which perhaps he thought Mr. Linden did not possess.
Faith did not indeed guess anything from the manner of the latter to her, although she felt it; she felt it as his own, kind and watchful and even affectionate; but like him, belonging to him, and therefore not telling upon the question. With a very humbled and self-chiding spirit, she was endeavouring to keep the face and manner which suited the place, above a deep sinking of heart which was almost overcoming. Her success was like the balance of her mind—doubtful. Gentle her face was as ever; all the crosses of the evening had not brought an angle there; but it was shadowed beyond the fitness of things; and she was still and retiring so far as it was possible to be, shrinking into a very child's lowness of place.
Ladies were in the majority that night and the gentlemen were obliged to be constantly on the move. In one of the minutes when Faith was alone, Mrs. Stoutenburgh came up.
"Faith," she whispered, "have you been doing anything to vex my friend?"
Faith started a little, with a sort of shadow of pain crossing her face.