"
During the whole of the next day--Wednesday--Jack Ives kept away;
he had, apparently, accepted the inevitable, and was healing his
wounded heart by a strict attention to his parochial duties.
Newhaven remarked on his absence with an air of relief, and Miss
Trix treated it as a matter of no importance; Lady
Queenborough was all smiles; and Dora Polton restricted herself
to exclaiming, as I sat by her at tea, in a low tone and a
propos of nothing in particular, "Oh, well--poor Mr. Ives!"
But on Thursday there occurred an event, the significance of
which passed at the moment unperceived, but which had, in fact,
most important results. This was no other than the arrival of
little Mrs. Wentworth, an intimate friend of Dora's. Mrs.
Wentworth had been left a widow early in life; she possessed a
comfortable competence; she was not handsome, but she was
vivacious, amusing, and, above all, sympathetic. She sympathized
at once with Lady Queenborough in her maternal anxieties, with
Trix on her charming romance, with Newhaven on his sweet
devotedness, with the rest of us in our obvious desolation--and,
after a confidential chat with Dora, she sympathized most
strongly with poor Mr. Ives on his unfortunate attachment.
Nothing would satisfy her, so Dora told me, except the
opportunity of plying Mr. Ives with her soothing balm; and Dora
was about to sit down and write him a note, when he strolled in
through the drawing room window, and announced that his cook's
mother was ill, and that he should be very much obliged if Mrs.
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