his hand as she passed through the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Cora paused in the hall at a point about twenty feet from the
door, a girlish stratagem frequently of surprising advantage to
the practitioner; but the two men had begun to speak of the
weather. Suffering a momentary disappointment, she went on,
stepping silently, and passed through a door at the end of the
hall into a large and barren looking dining-room, stiffly and
skimpily furnished, but well-lighted, owing to the fact that one
end of it had been transformed into a narrow "conservatory," a
glass alcove now tenanted by two dried palms and a number of
vacant jars and earthen crocks.

Here her sister sat by an open window, repairing masculine
underwear; and a handsome, shabby, dirty boy of about thirteen
sprawled on the floor of the "conservatory" unloosing upon its
innocent, cracked, old black and white tiles a ghastly family of
snakes, owls, and visaged crescent moons, in orange, green, and
other loathsome chalks. As Cora entered from the hall, a woman of
fifty came in at a door opposite, and, a dust-cloth retained under
her left arm, an unsheathed weapon ready for emergency, leaned
sociably against the door-casing and continued to polish a
tablespoon with a bit of powdered chamois-skin. She was tall and
slightly bent; and, like the flat, old, silver spoon in her hand,
seemed to have been worn thin by use; yet it was plain that the
three young people in the room "got their looks" from her. Her
eyes, if tired, were tolerant and fond; and her voice held its
youth and something of the music of Cora's.

"What is he like?" She addressed the daughter by the window.

"Why don't you ask Coralie?" suggested the sprawling artist,
relaxing his hideous labour. He pronounced his sister's name with
intense bitterness. He called it "Cora-_lee_," with an implication
far from subtle that his sister had at some time thus Gallicized
herself, presumably for masculine favour; and he was pleased to
receive tribute to his satire in a flash of dislike from her
lovely eyes.

"I ask Laura because it was Laura who went to the door," Mrs.
Madison answered. "I do not ask Cora because Cora hasn't seen him.
Do I satisfy you, Hedrick?"

"`Cora hasn't seen him!'" the boy hooted mockingly. "She hasn't?
She was peeking out of the library shutters when he came up the
front walk, and she wouldn't let me go to the door; she told Laura
to go, but first she took the library waste-basket