dy cool. And behind him the maids began
to sob and wail unrebuked.

Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight
of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and
talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was
under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris
attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house
when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent
casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had
adored.

The fragrance of masses and masses of damp flowers began to penetrate
everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside,
and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming.
Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept
opening the front door, and murmuring at the muffled telephone. Annie's
secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to
keep cards and messages straight--for every little courtesy must be
acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks'
time--and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent
florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to
the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.

When Norma went to her room, big boxes were on the bed, boxes that held
everything that was simple and beautiful in mourning: plain, charming
frocks, a smart long seal-bordered coat, veils and gloves, small and
elegant hats, even black-bordered handkerchiefs. She dressed herself
soberly, yet not without that mournful thrill that fitness and
becomingness lends to bereavement. When she went back to Annie's side
Annie was in beautiful lengths of lustreless crape, too; they settled
down to low, sad conversation, with a few of the privileged old friends.
Chris was nowhere to be seen, but at about six o'clock Acton came in to
show them a telegram from Leslie, flying homeward. Judge Lee was
hurrying to them from Washington, and for a few minutes Annie's
handsome, bewildered little boys came in with a governess, and she cried
over them, and clung to them forlornly.

After a distracted half-hour in the dining-room, when she and Acton and
Annie's secretary had soup and salad from a sort of buffet meal that was
going on there indefinitely, Norma went upstairs to find that the door
to the front upper sitting-room, closed for hours, was set ajar