ere before. Wait! I'll look out of the morning-room window. If it
is the person I'm expecting, I'll ring the bell. You understand. If the
morning-room bell has rung just as this person comes, it will be the one
I'm expecting.'

'Yes, miss.' With a splendid impassivity in the face of precautions so
unprecedented, the servant withdrew.

Vida smiled to herself as she leaned back among the cushions of her
capacious sofa, cutting the pages of a book. A pleasant place this room
of hers, wide and cool, where the creamy background of wall and
chintz-cover was lattice-laced with roses. The open windows looked out
upon one of those glimpses of greenery made vivid to the London eye, not
alone by gratitude, but by contrast of the leafage against the ebonized
bark of smoke-ingrained bole and twig.

The summer wind was making great, gentle fans of the plane branches; it
was swaying the curtains that hung down in long, straight folds from the
high cornices. No other sound in the room but the hard grate of the
ivory paper-knife sawing its way through a book whose outside alone (a
muddy-brown, pimpled cloth) proclaimed it utilitarian. Among the
fair-covered Italian volumes, the vellum-bound poets, and those
friends-for-a-lifetime wearing linen or morocco to suit a special taste;
above all, among that greater company 'quite impudently French' that
stood close ranked on shelves or lay about on tables--the brown book on
its dusty modern theme wore the air of a frieze-coated yeoman sitting
amongst broadcloth and silk. The reader glanced from time to time at the
clock. When the small glittering hand on the porcelain face pointed to
twenty minutes past five, the lady took her book and her paper-knife
into a front room on the floor below. She sat down behind the lowered
persienne, and every now and then lifted her eyes from the page and
peered out between the tiny slits. As the time went on she looked out
oftener. More than once she half rose and seemed about to abandon all
hope of the mysterious visitor when a hansom dashed up to the door. One
swift glance: 'They go in cabs!'--and Miss Levering ran to the bell.

A few moments after, she was again established in her sofa corner, and
the door of her sitting-room opened. 'The lady, miss.' Into the wide,
harmonious space was ushered a hot and harassed-looking woman, in a lank
alpaca gown and a tam-o'-shanter. Miss Claxton's clothes, like herself,
had borne the heat and burden of the day. She f