erself. Could it
be that Ella was one of those women whom Harry had alluded to as
running after Kerr? In the short twenty-four hours every individual help
she had counted upon had seemed to draw away from her--Kerr, whose
understanding she had been so sure of; Clara, whose propriety had never
failed; Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had so taken for
granted! It seemed as if the sapphire, whose presence she was never
unconscious of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power like the
evil eye over these people. But if it could turn such as Ella against
her, why, the Brussels carpet beneath her might well open and let her
down to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-cellar.

She started nervously at the step of the maid returning. The message
brought was unexpected. "Miss Buller says will you please walk
up-stairs?"

Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at any
time, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now she
was ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hall
abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a
wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large
roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of
miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and
work-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves.

From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" and
with the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face was
curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing out
under her eyes.

"Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wanted
to see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh,
no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit on
the bed."

Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned
herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster.
Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully,
and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were
trying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored.

"I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last.

"Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ella
paradoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?"

"You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella,
you've been cry