She had come to the offices of Sylvester, Kuhn, and Graves, at the senior partner's request, to be told, as she supposed, the full and final details of the financial disaster threatening the Warren family.

If those details should prove the disaster as overwhelming as it appeared, then--well, then, certain disagreeable duties must be performed.

But to meet the girl to whom her son was engaged, and whom she and he had carefully avoided meeting until the lawyers should acquaint them with the whole truth--to meet this girl, and her brother, and her guardian, thus unexpectedly and unprepared, was enough to shake the composure and nerve of even such a veteran campaigner as Mrs.M.Corcoran Dunn.
But of the three to whom the meeting was an absolute surprise,--Caroline, Malcolm and herself--she was characteristically the first to regain outward serenity.

For a moment she stood nonplused and speechless, but only for a moment.

Then she hastened, with outstretched arms, to Caroline and clasped her in affectionate embrace.
"My dear child!" she cried; "my dear girl! I'm _so_ glad to see you! I've thought of you so much! And I pity you so.