me, I felt again and again that the sparkling trivialities settled like
thistledown upon the solid mass I presented, and remained there because
of my native inability to waft them back. It was still as impossible for
me to entertain pretty girls in pink tarlatan as it had been on the
night of my first party; and the memory of that disastrous social
episode stung me at times when I stood large and awkward before a gay
and animated maiden, or sat wedged in, like a massive block, between two
patient and sleepy mothers. These people were all Sally's friends, not
mine, and it was for her sake, I never forgot for a minute, that they
had accepted me. With just such pleasant condescension they would still
have accepted me, I knew, if I had, in truth, entered their company with
my basket of potatoes or carrots on my arm. One alone held out
unwaveringly through the years; for Miss Mitty, shut with her pride and
her portraits in the old grey house, obstinately closed her big mahogany
doors against our repeated friendly advances. Sometimes at dusk, as I
passed on the crooked pavement under the two great sycamores, I would
glance up at the windows, where the red firelight glimmered on the small
square panes, and fancy that I saw her long, oval face gazing down on me
from between the parted lace curtains. But she made no sign of
forgiveness, and when Sally went to see her, as she did sometimes, the
old lady received her formally in the drawing-room, with a distant and
stately manner. She, who was the mixture of a Bland and a Fairfax, sat
enthroned upon her traditions, while we of the common, outside world
walked by under the silvery boughs of her sycamores.

"Aunt Mitty has told Selim not to admit me," said Sally one day at
luncheon. "I know she wasn't out in this dreadful March wind--she never
leaves the house except in summer--and yet when I went there, he told me
positively she was not at home. When I think of her all alone hour after
hour with Aunt Matoaca's things around her, I feel as if it would break
my heart. George says she is looking very badly."

"Does George see her?" I asked, glancing up from my cup of coffee, while
I waited for the light to a cigar. "I didn't imagine he had enough
attentions left over from his hunters to bestow upon maiden ladies."

The sugar tongs were in her hand, and she looked not at me, but at the
lump of sugar poised above her cup, as she answered,

"He is so good."

"Good?" I echoed lightly;