I fancy they
know nothing about it. I am here entirely--_entirely_ of my own accord.
I have come to place myself at your disposition if there is anything I
can do, any word I can say, to the end of preventing this catastrophe in
a spiritual life so pure and devoted; to ask you at all events to let me
join my prayers to yours that it shall not come about."
The squalor of the room seemed to lift before his eyes and be suffused
with light. At last he had made himself plain. But Mrs. Sand was not
transfigured. She seemed to sit, with her hands folded, in the midst of
a calculation.
"Then he _has_ proposed. I told her he would," she said.
"I believe he has asked her to marry him and she has refused, more than
once. But he is importunate, and I hear she needs help."
"Mr. Lindsay," said Mrs. Sand, "is a very takin' young man."
"I suppose we must consider that. There is position, too, and wealth.
These things count--we are all so human--even against the Divine
realities into possession of which Miss Filbert must have so perfectly
entered."
"I thought he must be pretty well off. Would he be one of them
Government officials?"
"He is a broker."
"Oh, is he indeed?" Mrs.
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