.
Hartwell switched on the lights. Oh, Aunt Hannah, I wish you could have
seen it before they took out those guns and spiders!"

"As if I didn't see quite enough when I saw William's face that morning
he came for me!" retorted Aunt Hannah, spiritedly.

"Dear Uncle William! What an old saint he has been all the way through,"
mused Billy aloud. "And Cyril--who would ever have believed that the
day would come when Cyril would say to me, as he did last night, that he
felt as if Marie had been gone a month. It's been just seven days, you
know."

"I know. She comes to-morrow, doesn't she?"

"Yes, and I'm glad. I shall tell Marie she needn't leave Cyril on _my_
hands again. Bertram says that at home Cyril hasn't played a dirge since
his engagement; but I notice that up here--where Marie might be, but
isn't--his tunes would never be mistaken for ragtime. By the way," she
added, as she rose from the table, "that's another surprise in store for
Hugh Calderwell. He always declared that Cyril wasn't a marrying man,
either, any more than Bertram. You know he said Bertram only cared for
girls to paint; but--" She stopped and looked inquiringly at Rosa, who
had appeared at that moment in the hall doorway.

"It's the telephone, Miss Neilson. Mr. Bertram Henshaw wants you."

A few minutes later Aunt Hannah heard Billy at the piano. For fifteen,
twenty, thirty minutes the brilliant scales and arpeggios rippled
through the rooms and up the stairs to Aunt Hannah, who knew, by the
very sound of them, that some unusual nervousness was being worked off
at the finger tips that played them. At the end of forty-five minutes
Aunt Hannah went down-stairs.

"Billy, my dear, excuse me, but have you forgotten what time it is?
Weren't you going out with Bertram?"

Billy stopped playing at once, but she did not turn her head. Her
fingers busied themselves with some music on the piano.

"We aren't going, Aunt Hannah," she said.

"Bertram can't."

"_Can't!_"

"Well, he didn't want to--so of course I said not to. He's been painting
this morning on a new portrait, and she said he might stay to luncheon
and keep right on for a while this afternoon, if he liked. And--he did
like, so he stayed."

"Why, how--how--" Aunt Hannah stopped helplessly.

"Oh, no, not at all," interposed Billy, lightly. "He told me all about
it the other night. It's going to be a very wonderful portrait; and,
of course, I wouldn't want to interfere with--his work!" A