ered, with a sort of trepidation, whether the man would expect to
stay and help him dress; but he only put the buttons in the clean shirt
and reopened the dresser drawers and laid out a change of things.

"Is there anything else, sir?" he asked.

"Nothing, thank you," Alan said.

"I was to tell you, sir, Mr. Sherrill is sorry he cannot be at home to
dinner to-night. Mrs. Sherrill and Miss Sherrill will be here. Dinner
is at seven, sir."

Alan dressed slowly, after the man had gone; and at one minute before
seven he went down-stairs.

There was no one in the lower hall and, after an instant of
irresolution and a glance into the empty drawing-room, he turned into
the small room at the opposite side of the hall. A handsome, stately,
rather large woman, whom he found there, introduced herself to him
formally as Mrs. Sherrill.

He knew from Sherrill's mention of the year of their marriage that Mrs.
Sherrill's age must be about forty-five, but if he had not known this,
he would have thought her ten years younger. In her dark eyes and her
carefully dressed, coal-black hair, and in the contour of her youthful
looking, handsome face, he could not find any such pronounced
resemblance to her daughter as he had seen in Lawrence Sherrill. Her
reserved, yet almost too casual acceptance of Alan's presence, told him
that she knew all the particulars about himself which Sherrill had been
able to give; and as Constance came down the stairs and joined them
half a minute later, Alan was certain that she also knew.

Yet there was in her manner toward Alan a difference from that of her
mother--a difference which seemed almost opposition. Not that Mrs.
Sherrill's was unfriendly or critical; rather, it was kind with the
sort of reserved kindness which told Alan, almost as plainly as words,
that she had not been able to hold so charitable a conviction in regard
to Corvet's relationship with Alan as her husband held, but that she
would be only the more considerate to Alan for that. It was this
kindness which Constance set herself to oppose, and which she opposed
as reservedly and as subtly as it was expressed. It gave Alan a
strange, exhilarating sensation to realize that, as the three talked
together, this girl was defending him.

Not him alone, of course, or him chiefly. It was Benjamin Corvet, her
friend, whom she was defending primarily; yet it was Alan too; and all
went on without a word about Benjamin Corvet or his affair