in the hall shone full in his face, and
the girl who came from that room beside it to answer his ring gave a
sort of conscious jump at sight of him as he uncovered and stood
bare-headed before her.

VI.

She must have recognized him from the photograph he had sent, and in
stature and figure he recognized her as the ideal he had cherished,
though her head was gilded with the light from the lamp, and he could
not make out whether her hair was dark or fair; her face was, of course,
a mere outline, without color or detail against the luminous interior.

He managed to ask, dry-tongued and with a heart that beat into his
throat, "Is Miss Simpson at home?" and the girl answered, with a high,
gay tinkle:

"Yes, she's at home. Won't you walk in?"

He obeyed, but at the sound of her silvery voice his heart dropped back
into his breast. He put his hat and coat on an entry chair, and prepared
to follow her into the room she had come out of. The door stood ajar,
and he said, as she put out her hand to push it open, "I am Mr.
Langbourne."

"Oh, yes," she answered in the same high, gay tinkle, which he fancied
had now a note of laughter in it.

An elderly woman of a ladylike village type was sitting with some
needlework beside a little table, and a young girl turned on the
piano-stool and rose to receive him. "My aunt, Mrs. Simpson, Mr.
Langbourne," said the girl who introduced him to these presences, and
she added, indicating the girl at the piano, "Miss Simpson."

They all three bowed silently, and in the hush the sheet on the music
frame slid from the piano with a sharp clash, and skated across the
floor to Langbourne's feet. It was the song of _La Paloma_ which she had
been singing; he picked it up, and she received it from him with a
drooping head, and an effect of guilty embarrassment.

She was short and of rather a full figure, though not too full. She was
not plain, but she was by no means the sort of beauty who had lived in
Langbourne's fancy for the year past. The oval of her face was squared;
her nose was arched; she had a pretty, pouting mouth, and below it a
deep dimple in her chin; her eyes were large and dark, and they had the
questioning look of near-sighted eyes; her hair was brown. There was a
humorous tremor in her lips, even with the prim stress she put upon them
in saying, "Oh, thank you," in a thick whisper of the voice he knew.

"And I," said the other girl, "am Juliet Bingham. Won't you sit down,