EXPIATION

I.





"I CAN never," said Mrs. Fetherel, "hear the bell ring without a
shudder."

Her unruffled aspect--she was the kind of woman whose emotions never
communicate themselves to her clothes--and the conventional
background of the New York drawing-room, with its pervading
implication of an imminent tea-tray and of an atmosphere in which
the social functions have become purely reflex, lent to her
declaration a relief not lost on her cousin Mrs. Clinch, who, from
the other side of the fireplace, agreed with a glance at the
clock, that it _was_ the hour for bores.

"Bores!" cried Mrs. Fetherel impatiently. "If I shuddered at _them_,
I should have a chronic ague!"

She leaned forward and laid a sparkling finger on her cousin's
shabby black knee. "I mean the newspaper clippings," she whispered.