.
De Peyster's remaining in her room might rouse suspicion. It seemed
the cheaper and safer course to try to merge herself, an unnoticed
figure, in the routine of the house.

The dining-room was low-ceilinged and occupied the front basement and
seemed to be ventilated solely through the kitchen. Mrs. De Peyster
hazily saw perhaps a dozen people; from among whom a bare arm,
slipping from the sleeve of a pink silk wrapper, languidly waved
toward a small table. Into the two chairs Mrs. Gilbert indicated the
twain sank.

A colored maid who had omitted her collar dropped before Mrs. De
Peyster a heavy saucer containing three shriveled black objects
immured in a dark, forbidding liquor that suggested some wry tincture
from a chemist's shop. In response to Mrs. De Peyster's glance of
shrinking inquiry Matilda whispered that they were prunes. Next the
casual-handed maid favored them with thin, underdone oatmeal, and with
thin, bitter coffee; and last with two stacks of pancakes, which in
hardly less substantial incarnation had previously been served them by
every whiff of kitchen air.

While she pretended to eat this uneatable usurper of her dainty
breakfasts, Mrs. De Peyster glanced furtively at the company. Utterly
common. And with such she had to associate--for months, perhaps!--she
who had mixed and mingled only with the earth's best!

Mrs. Gilbert--naturally Mrs. Gilbert was a widow--did not give Mrs.
De Peyster a second glance. The other boarders, after their first
scrutiny, hardly looked at her again. The effect was as if all had
turned their backs upon her.

Certainly this was odd behavior.

Then, in a flash, she understood. They were snubbing her as a social
inferior!

Mrs. De Peyster was beginning to flame when the clergyman they
had glimpsed the night before entered and pronounced a sonorous
good-morning, all-inclusive, as though intended for a congregation. He
seated himself at a small table just beyond Mrs. De Peyster's and was
unfolding his napkin when his eyes fell upon Mrs. De Peyster. And
then Mrs. De Peyster saw one of the oddest changes in a man's face
imaginable. Mr. Pyecroft's eyes, which had been large with benedictory
roundness, flashed with a smile. And then, at an instant's end, his
face was once more grave and clerically benign.

But that instant-long look made her shiver. What was in this
clergyman's mind? She watched him, in spite of herself--strangely
fascinated; stole looks at him durin