,
"for Mr. Pond. I wondered if he could have got lost, somewhere down
here--he's never turned up yet."

"Mr. Pond?"

"The director of the Settlement, you know, when it opens for business
in the fall. He happened to be in Washington, and was good enough to run
down to-day to make us a little address."

"Oh."

Carlisle found herself, beyond the door, in a quaint high-ceiled court,
enfolded with peristyles in two long rows, and paved with discolored
tiles loose under the foot. At the farther end of the court there ran
away a broad corridor into the dusk, and here also, full fifty feet
distant, rose the grand stairway with ornate sweeping balustrade ending
in a tall carved newel-post. Obsolete and ruined and queer the whole
placed looked, indeed....

"Luckily," added Dr. Vivian, "I'm in good time to serve as a guide."

But Miss Heth was already walking past him with an expensive rustle,
moving straight toward the stairway. For this, needless to say, was not
the moment to speak that pointed word or two which should unmask the
man; there would be an unavoidable vulgarity about it here, in this
solitude. And even if she should get no further opportunity
upstairs--well, after all, the situation spoke for itself; nay,
thundered. Had not Hugo--come to think of it--struck the note of the
subtler victory, he who had given magnificently and said nothing?
_Noblesse oblige_, as the Gauls say....

"Oh, no, that's not necessary," she replied, walking on. "There are the
stairs...."

The young man fell in behind her.

"The old house is really quite bewildering, upstairs. It happened that
my office was the only place available. Perhaps you will let me
show you--"

"Oh, I don't think I need trouble you, thank you."

"It is no trouble," said V. Vivian.

Good sentences these, and well pronounced. With them, conversation
seemed to languish. The processional pair moved across the shadowy court
in entire silence. The benevolent lady led, never so securely entrenched
in the victorious order, the beloved of prodigal Hugo Canning, to whom
no harm should befall. After her proceeded the slum doctor: the hard
marble betrayed the inequality of his footsteps. A minute more and they
would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the
meeting. Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a
company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of
voices. Carlisle's foot trod upon the bottom step of t