rant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from a
family scandal.

Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had to
cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less
abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of
Dr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact
explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her
hand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural.

Mrs. Moon restrained her feelings until her niece had moved about a bit,
and sat down by her enemy the cabinet, and presented herself in every
possible aspect. The Old Lady's eyes lost no movement of the curious
figure; when she had taken it in, grasped it in all its details, she
began.

"Well, I declare, Juliana"--(five-and-twenty years ago she used to call
her "Jooley," keeping the full name to mark disapproval or displeasure.
Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanently
displeased)--"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition of
yourself? (And will you draw your chair back--you're incommoding the
cabinet.) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in _my_
life--at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig out
of a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you're
very much mistaken."

That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea--to carry it off; to brazen it
out; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at all
remarkable in her personal appearance.

"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could stand
that shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn't
mauve-pink."

"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in Miss
Quincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt could
not look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at that
word. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked in
an awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse shivered as Miss Quincey
trembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns it
paled and flushed its painful pink. They were blushing for each other.
For it _was_ mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now.

"Turn round!"

Miss Quincey turned round.

"Much too young for you! Why, bless me, if it doesn't throw up every bit
of yellow in your face! If you don't believe me, look in the glass."

Miss Quincey l