hat you will do me. I need you, Mrs. Slifer," she pressed
the lady's arm. "My old friend, who lives with me, has left me for the
day, and, moreover, she is too old to travel. I must not be alone. I
need you. It is a kindness that you will do me. Now you will wait for me
here and tea will be brought to you. I shall keep you waiting but for a
few moments."

It was to be lifted on the back of a genie. She had wafted them up,
along the garden paths, across the verandah, into the serenity and
spaciousness and dim whites and greens and silvers of the great
music-room, with a backward gaze that had, in all its sweetness,
something of hypnotic force and fixity.

She left them with the Sargent portrait looking down at them and the
room in its strangeness and beauty seemed part of the spell she laid
upon them. The Slifers, herded together in the middle of it, gazed about
them half awe-struck and spoke almost in whispers.

"Why, girls," said Mrs. Slifer, who was the first to find words, "this
is the most thrilling thing I ever came across."

"You've pulled it off this time, mother, and no mistake," said Maude,
glancing somewhat furtively up at the Sargent. "Do look at that
perfectly lovely dress she has on in that picture. Did you ever see such
pearls; and the eyes seem to follow you, don't they?"

"The poor, distracted thing just clings to us," said Mrs. Slifer. "I
shouldn't wonder if she was as lonely as could be."

"All the same," Beatrice, the doubting Thomas of the group, now
commented, "I don't think however excited she was she ought to have
shaken you like that, mother." Beatrice had examined the appurtenances
of the great room with a touch of nonchalance. It was she whom Gregory
had seen at the station, seated on the pile of luggage.

"That's petty of you, Bee," said Mrs. Slifer gravely. "Real small and
petty. It's a great soul at white heat we've been looking at."

Handcock at this point brought in tea, and after she had placed the tray
and disposed the plates of cake and bread-and-butter and left the
Slifers alone again, Mrs. Slifer went on under her breath, seating
herself to pour out the tea. "And do look at this tea-pot, girls; isn't
it too cute for words. My! What will the Jones say when they hear about
this! They'd give their eye-teeth to be with us now."

The Slifers, indeed, were never to forget their adventure. It was to be
impressed upon their minds not only by its supreme enviableness but by
its supre