ts on American towns during the hot season--there was now
and then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle
of the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the
suffocating night--of the strange influence, half-sweet, half-sad, that
abides in houses uninhabited or about to become so, in places muffled and
bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem
(like the disconcerted dogs, to whom everything is alike sinister) to
recognise the eve of a journey.

After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to denote the return
of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden with the refection prepared for
her son. What I saw however was two other female forms, visitors
apparently just admitted, and now ushered into the room. They were not
announced--the servant turned her back on them and rambled off to our
hostess. They advanced in a wavering tentative unintroduced way--partly,
I could see, because the place was dark and partly because their visit
was in its nature experimental, a flight of imagination or a stretch of
confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other slim, and I made
sure in a moment that one was talkative and the other reserved. It was
further to be discerned that one was elderly and the other young, as well
as that the fact of their unlikeness didn't prevent their being mother
and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes, but the
interval had sufficed to establish a communication--really copious for
the occasion--between the strangers and the unknown gentleman whom they
found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was not my doing--for
what had I to go upon?--and still less was it the doing of the younger
and the more indifferent, or less courageous, lady. She spoke but
once--when her companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the
next day to be married. Then she protested "Oh mother!" in a tone that
struck me in the darkness as doubly odd, exciting my curiosity to see her
face.

It had taken the elder woman but a moment to come to that, and to various
other things, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.
Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.

"Well, she won't know me--I guess she hasn't ever heard much about me,"
the good lady said; "but I've come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that will
make it all right. I presume