as the young man
tentatively opened the door, and looked in. He wore an evening dress,
even to the white cravat, and he carried in his hand a crush hat:
there was something anomalous in his appearance, beyond the phenomenal
character of his costume, and he blushed consciously as he bowed to
Grace, and then at her motion shook hands with her. Mrs. Maynard did not
give herself the fatigue of rising; she stretched her hand to him from
the lounge, and he took it without the joy which he had shown when Grace
made him the same advance. "How very swell you look. Going to an evening
party this morning?" she cried; and after she had given him a second
glance of greater intensity, "Why, what in the world has come over'
you?" It was the dress which Mr. Libby wore. He was a young fellow
far too well made, and carried himself too alertly, to look as if any
clothes misfitted him; his person gave their good cut elegance, but he
had the effect of having fallen away in them. "Why, you look as if you
had been sick a month!" Mrs. Maynard interpreted.

The young man surveyed himself with a downward glance. "They're
Johnson's," he explained. "He had them down for a hop at the Long Beach
House, and sent over for them. I had nothing but my camping flannels,
and they have n't been got into shape yet, since yesterday. I wanted to
come over and see how you were."

"Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Maynard. "I never thought of you! How in
the world did you get to your camp?"

"I walked."

"In all that rain?"

"Well, I had been pretty well sprinkled, already. It was n't a question
of wet and dry; it was a question of wet and wet. I was going off
bareheaded, I lost my hat in the water, you know,--but your man, here,
hailed me round the corner of the kitchen, and lent me one. I've been
taking up collections of clothes ever since."

Mr. Libby spoke lightly, and with a cry of "Barlow's hat!" Mrs. Maynard
went off in a shriek of laughter; but a deep distress kept Grace silent.
It seemed to her that she had been lacking not only in thoughtfulness,
but in common humanity, in suffering him to walk away several miles in
the rain, without making an offer to keep him and have him provided for
in the house. She remembered now her bewildered impression that he was
without a hat when he climbed the stairs and helped her to the house;
she recalled the fact that she had thrust him on to the danger he had
escaped, and her heart was melted with grief and shame.