"And if they should hear Lemuel's name, and put two and two
together, and the talk should get to Sibyl--well, I thought it all
over, until the whole thing became perfectly lurid, and I wished
Lemuel Barker was back in the depths of Willoughby Pastures----"
"I understand," said Sewell. "Go on!"
Miss Vane did so, after stopping to laugh. "It seemed to me I
couldn't wait for Sibyl to get home--she spent the night in
Brookline, and didn't come till five o'clock--to tell her. I began
before she had got her hat or gloves off, and she sat down with them
on, and listened like a three-years' child to the Ancient Mariner,
but she lost no time when she understood the facts. She went out
immediately and stripped the nasturtium bed. If you could have seen
it when you came in, there's hardly a blossom left. She took the
decorations of Lemuel's room into her own hands at once; and if
there is any saving power in nasturtiums, he will be a changed
person. She says that now the great object is to keep him from
feeling that he has been an outcast, and needs to be reclaimed; she
says nothing could be worse for him. I don't know how she knows."
"Barker might feel that he was disgraced," said the minister, "but I
don't believe that a whole system of ethics would make him suspect
that he needed to be reclaimed."
"He makes me suspect that _I_ need to be reclaimed," said Miss
Vane, "when he looks at me with those beautiful honest eyes of his.
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