y dressed negroes,
and escorted by a trio of beribboned young gentlemen, prodigal of gallant
speeches, amorous sighs, and languishing glances. Mistress Stagg looked,
started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor the armful of
delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently curtsying upon the
doorstep.

The bearers set down their load. One of the gentlemen opened the chair
door with a flourish, and the divinity, compressing her hoop, descended. A
second cavalier flung back Mistress Stagg's gate, and the third, with a
low bow, proffered his hand to conduct the fair from the gate to the
doorstep. The lady shook her head; a smiling word or two, a slight curtsy,
the wave of a painted fan, and her attendants found themselves dismissed.
She came up the path alone, slowly, with her head a little bent. Audrey,
watching her from the window, knew who she was, and her heart beat fast.
If this lady were in town, then so was he; he would not have stayed behind
at Westover. She would have left the room, but there was not time. The
mistress of the house, smiling and obsequious, fluttered in, and Evelyn
Byrd followed.

There had been ordered for her a hood of golden tissue, with wide and long
streamers to be tied beneath the chin, and she was come to try it on.
Mistress Stagg had it all but ready,--there was only the least bit of
stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few minutes?
She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the quiet of the
shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and talkativeness of the
world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of milliner, took the gauzy
trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the farthest window, and fell
busily to work.

It seemed to grow more and more quiet in the room: the shadow of the
leaves lay still upon the floor; the drowsy humming of the bees outside
the windows, the sound of locusts in the trees, the distant noises of the
town,--all grew more remote, then suddenly appeared to cease.

Audrey raised her eyes, and met the eyes of Evelyn. She knew that they had
been upon her for a long time, in the quiet of the room. She had sat
breathless, her head bowed over her work that lay idly in her lap, but at
last she must look. The two gazed at each other with a sorrowful
steadfastness; in the largeness of their several natures there was no room
for self-consciousness; it was the soul of each that gazed. But in the
mists of earthly ignorance th