started up, and, without waiting to raise from the floor the armful of
delicate silk which she had dropped, was presently curtsying upon the
doorstep.

The bearers set down their load. One of the gentlemen opened the chair
door with a flourish, and the divinity, compressing her hoop, descended. A
second cavalier flung back Mistress Stagg's gate, and the third, with a
low bow, proffered his hand to conduct the fair from the gate to the
doorstep. The lady shook her head; a smiling word or two, a slight curtsy,
the wave of a painted fan, and her attendants found themselves dismissed.
She came up the path alone, slowly, with her head a little bent. Audrey,
watching her from the window, knew who she was, and her heart beat fast.
If this lady were in town, then so was he; he would not have stayed behind
at Westover. She would have left the room, but there was not time. The
mistress of the house, smiling and obsequious, fluttered in, and Evelyn
Byrd followed.

There had been ordered for her a hood of golden tissue, with wide and long
streamers to be tied beneath the chin, and she was come to try it on.
Mistress Stagg had it all but ready,--there was only the least bit of
stitchery; would Mistress Evelyn condescend to wait a very few minutes?
She placed a chair, and the lady sank into it, finding the quiet of the
shadowed room pleasant enough after the sunlight and talkativeness of the
world without. Mistress Stagg, in her role of milliner, took the gauzy
trifle, called by courtesy a hood, to the farthest window, and fell
busily to work.

It seemed to grow more and more quiet in the room: the shadow of the
leaves lay still upon the floor; the drowsy humming of the bees outside
the windows, the sound of locusts in the trees, the distant noises of the