in his keeping. He
caught up her bag, and she followed him out, with a blush over her
shoulder for the janitress, who smiled after her with mistaken
knowingness. But this was at least her self-delusion, and Cornelia had
an instant in the confusion when it seemed as if Ludlow's coming had
somehow annulled the tacit deceit she had practised in letting the
janitress suppose she expected some one.

Ludlow kept talking to her all the way in the horse-car, but she could
find only the briefest and dryest answers to his friendly questions
about her mother and the Burtons; and all Pymantoning; and she could
not blame him for taking such a hasty leave of her at her
boarding-house that he almost flew down the steps before the door
closed upon her.

She knew that she had disgusted him; and she hinted at this in the
letter of scolding gratitude which she wrote to Mrs. Burton before she
slept, for the trick she had played her. After all, though, she
reasoned, she need not be so much troubled: he had done it for Mrs.
Burton, and not for her, and he had not thought it worth while to bring
a chaperon. To be sure, he had no time for that; but there was
something in it all which put Cornelia back to the mere child she was
when they first met in the Fair House at Pymantoning; she kept seeing
herself angry and ill-mannered and cross to her mother, and it was as
if he saw her so, too. She resented that, for she knew that she was
another person now, and she tingled with vexation that she had done
nothing to make him realize it.

XI.

Ludlow caught a cab in the street, and drove furiously to his lodging,
where he dressed in ten minutes, so that he was not more than fifteen
minutes late at the dinner he had risked missing for Cornelia's sake.

"I'm afraid I'm very late," he said, from his place at the left of his
hostess; he pulled his napkin across his lap, and began to attack his
oysters at once.

"Oh, not at all," said the lady, but he knew that she would have said
much the same if he had come as they were rising from table.

A clear, gay voice rose from the corner of the board diagonally
opposite: "The candles haven't begun to burn their shades yet; so you
are still early, Mr. Ludlow."

The others laughed with the joy people feel in having a familiar fact
noted for the first time. They had all seen candle-shades weakly topple
down on the flames and take fire at dinner.

The gay voice went on, rendered, perhaps, a little