and Mrs. Ellersly and I greeted each other courteously, though Mrs.
Ellersly's eyes and mine met in a glance like the flash of steel on steel.
"We were just going," said she, and then I felt that I had arrived in the
midst of a tempest of uncommon fury.

"You must stop and make _me_ a visit," protested I, with elaborate
politeness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to "make up and be
friends"--and resume their places at the trough.

She was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of them
offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying good-by
to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had closed the
drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to open it for them
when I was restrained by what I saw working in the old woman's face. She
had set her will on escaping from my loathed presence without a "scene;"
but her rage at having been outgeneraled was too fractious for her will.

"You scoundrel!" she hissed, her whole body shaking and her
carefully-cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth swallowed
up in a black cyclone of hate. "You gutter-plant! God will punish you for
the shame you have brought upon us!"

I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire to
return insult for insult--had not Anita evidently again and finally
rejected them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall I
rang for Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into the
drawing-room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I saw
she was not going to speak. Then I said: "What time will you have dinner?"
But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and gratitude that
filled me. "She has chosen!" I was saying to myself over and over.

"Whenever you usually have it," she replied, without looking up.

"At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders."

I rang for him and went into my little smoking-room. She had resisted her
parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot
with me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing
all that had happened, I let a wild hope send tenacious roots deep into me.
How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step
falter and the heart quail!

XXIV. BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS

During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation--though burden I did
not find it. Like most close-mouthe