CHAPTER LIII. THE FRIEND IS FOUND.
Mrs. Ellmother looked into the parlor. “I told you Mr. Mirabel would call again,” she announced. “Here he is.”
“Has he asked to see me?”
“He leaves it entirely to you.”
For a moment, and a moment only, Emily was undecided. “Show him in,” she said.
Mirabel’s embarrassment was visible the moment he entered the room. For the first time in his life—in the presence of a woman—the popular preacher was shy. He who had taken hundreds of fair hands with sympathetic pressure—he who had offered fluent consolation, abroad and at home, to beauty in distress—was conscious of a rising color, and was absolutely at a loss for words when Emily received him. And yet, though he appeared at disadvantage—and, worse still, though he was aware of it himself—there was nothin
