II

stealthily. Mean, mean mean; utterly mean and damned, a sneaking evil spirit. She pulled herself upright and cleared her throat in a businesslike way. The echo of Harriett’s voice in her voice plumbed her for tears. But there were no tears. Only something close round her that moulded her face in lines of despair. The hall was in sight. She was going down to the hall to look for letters on the hall table, and go back. She paused in the hall. If the dining-room door opened she would kill someone with a cold blind glance and go angrily on and out of the front door. If it did not open? It remained closed. It was not going to open. It came quietly wide as if someone had been waiting behind it with the handle turned. Mrs. Bailey was in the hall with a firm little hand on her arm.⁠— Well , young lady?⁠—Miriam turned full round, shrinking backwards towards the hall table. Mrs. Bailey was clutching her hands⁠—Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?⁠⸺⁠I can’t whispered Miriam briskly, moving towards the dining-room door.⁠—I’ve got to go out she murmured, standing just inside the open door.⁠—Going out asked Mrs. Bailey in a refined little voice throwing a proud fond shy glance towards Miriam from her recovered place behind the tea-tray. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled brightly under the gaslight. Miriam’s glance elastic in the warmth coming from the room swept from the flood of yellow hair on the back of the youngest Bailey girl sitting close at her mother’s left hand, across to the far side of the table. The pale grey-blue eyes of the eldest Bailey girl were directed towards the bread and butter her hand was stretched out to take with the unseeing look they must have had when she had turned her face towards the door. At her side, between her and her mother sat the young Norwegian gentleman, a dark blue upright form with a narrow gold bar set aslant in the soft mass of black silk tie bulging about the uncreased flatness of his length of grey waistcoat. He had reared his head smoothly upright and a smooth metallic glance had slid across her from large dark clear easily opened eyes. He was very young, about twenty; the leanness of his dart-like perfectly clad form led slenderly up to a lean distinguished head. But