came
up the avenue. There was no hope of escape for him; he had not perceived
the visitor until it was too late to retreat, and a voice called out:

"Oh, there you are, old fellow; I'm in luck after all. You see I walked
over to my farm on the back road," he explained, "intending to take the
half-past three train to New York, but I missed it. So I said to myself,
'I'll cut across the fields, down the hill, and stop at Mellen's, beg a
dinner, and get him to send me over in time for the five o'clock
train'--wasn't a bad idea, eh?"

"A very good idea on the contrary," Mellen answered, with a desperate
attempt at hospitality, while the visitor wrung his hand again and burst
into shouts of laughter, as if some wonderfully good joke lay in the
affair. "And how is your good lady?" he asked. "And the pretty little
sister--quite well, eh?"

"Tolerably so," Mellen answered; "complains of headache and that sort of
thing."

He conducted his guest into the library, and meeting Dolf in the hall,
directed him to inform his mistress of the arrival.

Mellen made an effort to be civil though the man was tiresome in the
extreme; perhaps it was better to endure his society than to meet his
wife that day without the restraint of a stranger's presence.

Indeed, without some of those social restraints to which all men are
more or less slaves, it is doubtful if Mellen could have appeared so
perfectly calm. As it was, the fire that consumed him raged unseen. Dolf
carried his message upstairs, where it was received with a little shriek
from Elsie, and blank dismay on the part of Elizabeth.

"I can't go down," she said; "Elsie, you must take my place at the
table. Say that I am ill, fainting, anything."

"Indeed, I'll do nothing of the sort," returned Elsie; "if you don't go
down I shall stay with you. I am nervous as I can be, and if you are not
at the table I shall break down completely."

The girl was full of selfishness to the very last--not willing to yield
her comfort in the slightest particular, but Elizabeth only sighed as
she observed it, and said, quietly:

"After all, it is just as well--change your dress, Elsie."

These two women commenced the duties of a dinner toilet with heavy
hearts, scarcely heeding what they put on.

But when the dinner hour approached, they entered the drawing-room
together and almost smiling, Elsie looking exquisitely pretty in her
dark blue silk, with those bright ringlets floating about her sh