You’ve got to go on living, and you know perfectly well your mother would want you to be happy.”

“Yes,” said Marjorie sweetly. “I know, and I’m not stretching out my grief. Mother and I talked it over together, and she told me all that. I understand, and I don’t intend to mope. But somehow I don’t feel I can stand gaiety just yet. I’ve had two other invitations but I’m declining them both—”

Marjorie hadn’t been quite sure till this minute what she was going to do, but now it was all very clear in her mind.

“But, Marge, it’s only our house. It’s almost like home, you know. It isn’t as if we were going to have a lot of strangers either. There will be just the cousins and aunts and uncles. You’ve always known them, and Mother intends to plan it all very quietly. I’m sure there won’t be anything to upset you. If you find it’s too much I’ll take you off in the car to some quiet place for a few hours and rest you up, and you really must see it will be better for you than moping around here in this lonely house.”

“You’re very kind!” said Marjorie with a troubled gaze, but more and more certain that she wasn’t going to accept. Then suddenly she lifted frank eyes to his.

“You see, Evan, there’s something I have to do first before I can go anywhere and begin life again.”

“Something you have to do? What do you mean?” He turned puzzled, dominating eyes upon her.

Marjorie hesitated, then spoke decisively. After all, he was her good friend, why not confide in him? Perhaps he could advise her.

“You know I’m an adopted child, don’t you? You’ve always known that, haven’t you, Evan?”

A startled, almost cautious look came into his eyes.

“Why—yes, of course, but what has that got to do with it? You don’t mean, Marjorie, that after all these years your mother has cut you out of the property she promised you? I heard her say myself that she was leaving you everything. You don’t mean that she tied it up or anything?”

Marjorie laughed and drew a deep breath.

“Oh, no, nothing like that, Evan. I’m very comfortably fixed, of course.”

A relieved look came into the young man’s handsome eyes.

“Well, then, why worry?” he said playfully, and his hand stole across and dropped familiarly, warmly, down upon hers.

They were sitting on the deep couch, Marjorie at one end, Evan near the other, but now he leaned across with a comforting manner and looked into her eyes.

She was quite serious as she answered him.

“It’s not money worries,” she said. “It’s something entirely different. It’s my family. My birth family, I mean.”

“Your birth family?” He looked at her, startled. “Have they dared turn up and annoy you?”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “Of course not!”

“Why ‘of course not’? They likely would, if they knew you were alone and unprotected. A girl with a fortune is never quite safe alone. You ought not to stay a night alone here!”

“Why, I’m not alone!” said Marjorie. “The servants would protect me with their lives if there were need. I’m quite safe. But it’s absurd, Evan, for you to talk that way about my birth family! Don’t, please! It hurts me!”

“Hurts you?” he said, looking at her incredulously. “Hurts you to hear that people you never saw in your life, and about whom you know nothing, might possibly have some motives that were not of the best?”

“They are my own people, Evan!”

“Nonsense! Nothing of the kind!” said Evan, lifting his well-modeled chin haughtily. “You are no more connected with them than I am. They gave you up! I should think you would never want to see or hear of them! I should say you are fortunate that they are not troubling you. Let sleeping dogs lie! You have no obligation whatever toward them!”

Something about the harshness of his tone made Marjorie give a little shiver and draw her hand quietly away from under his.

“I don’t feel that way, Evan!” she said gently, marveling that after her hours of doubt she suddenly felt clear in her mind about the matter.