hts, and Cally
returned to earth with a start ... Good _heavens!_ Four o'clock
already!--and she with twenty minutes' getting ready to do!

She caught up the pages of the unfinished letter, and skipped for the
stairs. In the hall there was unbroken quiet, with no sound of a servant
coming. Cally paused, listening, and then remembered that it was Sunday
afternoon, when even the best Africans are so very likely to have "just
stepped out." Why wait? The girl went and opened the door herself, a
smile of greeting in her eye, a lively apology for her obvious
unreadiness upon her lip.

However, it was not, after all, the amorous Mr. Avery who confronted
her. The vestibule held only an ill-dressed young girl, in a gaudy red
hat, the sort of looking person who should at most have rung the
basement bell, if that: and she herself seemed to realize this by the
guilty little start and tremble she gave when the stately door swung
open upon her. The young mistress of the house eyed her doubtfully.

"Good afternoon."

"G-good evenin', ma'am!..."

As she seemed at a loss how to proceed, Carlisle said: "Yes? What is
it?"

The young person raised a bare hand and brushed it, with a strange
gesture, before her eyes.

"Dr. Vivian he told me to give you this note, ma'am."

She added, as if suddenly moved to destroy a possible impression of Dr.
Vivian as a slave-driver, flinging orders this way and that:

"He'd of brung it himself, on'y I was going walkin' myself, ma'am, and
asked him to leave me take it."

If the fall was from the height of the securest moment Carlisle had
known since her self-betrayal, the more stunning was the impact. Her
heart appeared to abdicate its duties, with one kick; all her being drew
together in a knot within her. It had come, after all. To run away was
well, but she had not run soon enough....

She received the note mechanically, saying: "Very well."

"Would you wish me to wait for a nanser, ma'am? Doctor he didn't
say ..."

In heaven or earth, what answer would she find to this?

"No, you needn't wait."

"Do you feel faint, ma'am?"

"Faint?... No, why should I?"

The young person, convicted of impertinence and silliness besides,
turned red, but would not remove her gaze from the lady's face.

"The--the heat we been havin', ma'am. I don't know--it's so sickenin',
kind of. I--I fainted last week, twice, ma'am."

Something nameless in the little creature's wide-eyed gaze, timid and
yet thr