It was a dark, cold night, and the sudden appearance of a lady on the
doorstep, so far from the station, astonished the footman who opened the
door. He had heard no sound of wheels, and he peered out past her,
expecting to see some manly escort emerge from the night. None came. But
she was unmistakably a lady, and her mourning costume seemed to furnish
the necessary credentials. When she handed him a black-bordered card and
asked for Miss Mary Ware of Arizona, with an air of calm assurance and
with the broadest of English accents, he bowed obsequiously and ushered
her into the drawing room.

In the far end of it Herr Vogelbaum was talking lustily in German to two
young men, evidently fellow musicians. Otherwise it was deserted,
except for A.O., and a bashful, overgrown boy of seventeen, who sat
opposite her on a chair far too low for him. It gave him the effect of
sprawling, and he was constantly drawing in his long legs and thrusting
them out again. The teacher who was to be drawing room chaperon for the
evening had not yet come down.

The lady in black glided into the room with the air of being so absorbed
in her own affairs that she looked upon the other occupants as she did
the furniture. Without even a direct glance at the young people in the
corner she swept up to a chair within a few feet of them and sat down to
wait. Jimmy, in the midst of some tale about a prank that the High
School Invincibles had played on a rival base-ball team, faltered, grew
confused and finished haltingly. For all her spectacles and crape the
golden haired stranger was fascinatingly young and pretty.

A.O. was provoked that her visitor should show to such disadvantage even
before this unknown lady who apparently was taking no notice of them.
But when he paused she could think of nothing to say herself for a
moment or two. Then, to break the silence which was growing painful, she
plunged into an account of one of the last escapades of her wicked
room-mate, whom she pictured as a most fascinating, but a desperately
reckless creature. It was funny, the way she told it, and it sent Jimmy
off into a spasm of mirth. But she would almost rather have bitten her
tongue out than to have caused Jimmy to explode in that wild bray of a
laugh. He slapped his knee repeatedly, and doubled up as if he could
laugh no longer, only to break out in a second bray, louder than the
first. It made the gentlemen in the other end of the room look around
inquiring