Deliver us!" said the lady. "If I've got to hear _you_ admire her too!"

Late in the evening of the day when she had threatened to speak to Lanse
about his wife's health, Garda came and knocked at Margaret's door. "I
wanted to see you," she said, entering.

Adolfo had gone an hour before, and she had been in her own room
meanwhile; but she had not taken off her white lace attire, or loosened
the braids of her hair. Margaret too was fully dressed.

"What have you been doing?" Garda demanded, suspiciously, as she looked
at her. "Not crying?"

"I think I have forgotten how to cry."

"Well, your eyes are dry," Garda admitted. She closed the door, then
went to one of the windows and looked out. There had been a heavy rain
during the evening, and the air was much cooler; it was very dark. She
closed the shutters of all the three windows and fastened them. "It's so
gloomy out there! Pine cones? What luck! we'll have a fire."

"Garda--we shall melt!"

"No, the room is too large." She piled the cones on the hearth and set
fire to them; in an instant the blaze flared out and lighted up all the
dusky corners. "That's better. Only one poor miserable little candle?"
And she proceeded to light four others that stood about here and there.

"Are you preparing for a ball?"

"I am preparing for a talk. I'm lonely to-night, Margaret, and I can't
bear to feel lonely; how long may I stay? Are you sure you haven't got
to go and do something?--say good-night to Mr. Harold, for instance?"

"He has been asleep these two hours. He always has one of his men in the
room with him."

"Yes, I know. But why haven't you undressed, then, all this time?" Garda
went on, with returning suspicion.

"Why haven't you? But have you no conscience, thinking of poor Adolfo
banging into all the trees and falling into all the ditches on his way
home?"

"No, Adolfo and I are not troubled about conscience,--Adolfo and I
understand each other perfectly. It's in the blood, I suppose; we belong
to the same race," said the daughter of the Dueros.

She had been standing watching her fire; now she drew up a chair before
it and sat down. "I did not say anything to Mr. Harold about you, after
all," she said.

"I thought you wouldn't when I told you I did not wish it."

"I shall do it to-morrow; you are to come north with me the next time I
go."

"I shall not leave East Angels."

"I saw Evert in New York," Garda began again, after a short silence. "I
wr