scent which went with her perfectly and made
her unhappily definite; suited to her clumsily dyed hair, to her soiled
white shoes, to the hot red hat smothered in plumage, to the restless
stub-fingered hands, to the fat, plated rings, of which she wore a
great quantity, though, surprisingly enough, the large diamonds in her
ears were pure, and of a very clear water.

It was she who broke the silence once more. "Well," she drawled,
coughing genteelly at the same time, "better late than never, as the
saying is. I wonder who it is gits up all them comical sayings?"
Apparently she had no genuine desire for light upon this mystery, as
she continued, immediately: "I have a gen'leman friend that's always
gittin' 'em off. 'Well,' he says, 'the best of friends must part,'
and, 'Thou strikest me to the heart'--all kinds of cracks like that.
He's real comical. And yet," she went on in an altered voice, "I don't
like him much. I'd be glad if I'd never seen him."

The change of tone was so marked that Ariel looked at her keenly, to
find herself surprised into pitying this strange client of Joe's; for
tears had sprung to the woman's eyes and slid along the lids, where she
tried vainly to restrain them. Her face had altered too, like her
voice, haggard lines suddenly appearing about the eyes and mouth as if
they had just been pencilled there: the truth issuing from beneath her
pinchbeck simulations, like a tragic mask revealed by the displacement
of a tawdry covering.

"I expect you think I'm real foolish," she said, "but I be'n waitin' so
awful long--and I got a good deal of worry on my mind till I see Mr.
Louden."

"I am sorry," Ariel turned from the roses, and faced her and the heavy
perfume. "I hope he will come soon."

"I hope so," said the other. "It's something to do with me that keeps
him away, and the longer he is the more it scares me." She shivered
and set her teeth together. "It's kind of hard, waitin'. I cert'nly
got my share of troubles."

"Don't you think that Mr. Louden will be able to take care of them for
you?"

"Oh, I HOPE so, Miss Tabor! If he can't, nobody can." She was crying
openly now, wiping her eyes with her musk-soaked handkerchief. "We had
to send fer him yesterday afternoon--"

"To come to Beaver Beach, do you mean?" asked Ariel, leaning forward.

"Yes, ma'am. It all begun out there,--least-ways it begun before that
with me. It was all my fault. I deserve all that's comin' to me