hted
lamp. Mrs. Coombe entered first, there was an instant to observe and
wonder at her. She seemed a different woman, young, pretty, sparkling;
even her hair seemed brighter. Behind her came Callandar and when Esther
saw his face her heart seemed to stop. It was the face, almost, of a man
of middle age, a firm, quiet face with cold eyes.

"Esther!" Mrs. Coombe's voice held incipient reproof.

The girl came forward and offered her hand. The doctor, this new doctor,
took it, let it drop and said, "Good evening, Miss Esther," then turned
to Jane with a politely worded message from Ann and Bubble.

"You can tell them I won't go," said Jane crossly. "They think they are
smart. Just because--"

Esther slipped quietly from the room. In the hall outside she paused,
breathless. She felt as if she had run a long way. Shame enveloped her,
a shame whose cause she could not put into words. She only knew that she
had, in the few seconds of that cold greeting, been profoundly
humiliated. She quivered with the sting of unwarranted expectancy. But
if this had been all, it would have been well. There was something else,
some deeper pain surging through the smart of wounded pride, something
which led her with blind steps into a dark corner of the stairs where
she sat very quiet and still.

Through the open front door, she could see the bars of lamplight on the
deserted veranda, and hear from the open windows of the living-room a
hum of conversation in which Jane seemed to be taking a leading part.
Then came the tinkle of the old piano and Mary's voice, singing, or
attempting to sing, for it was soon apparent that her voice sagged
pitifully on the high notes.

Presently Jane came out, banging the door. Jane's manners, Esther
thought, were really very bad. She had probably banged the door because
she had been sent to bed and she had probably been sent to bed because
she had been saucy. Esther wondered what particular form her sauciness
had taken, but when Jane called softly, "Esther!" she did not answer.
She did not want to put Jane to bed to-night. The child flashed past her
up the stairs and soon could be heard from an upstair window calling
imperatively for Aunt Amy. But Aunt Amy, flitting through the dim garden
wringing her hands, did not hear. Jane, much injured, went to bed by
herself that night.

In the lamp-lit room there was no more music. The murmur of voices grew
less distinct. There were intervals of silence. (Only very