White, lying there, crying and moaning to herself with her poor
old head on the stairs; once she tried to speak, but Miss White
did not hear her; it was intolerable to see such pain. Blair's
sister, ashamed with his shame, stammered something, she did not
know what, then opening the front door, slipped out into the
dusk. The situation was so incredible she could not take it in.
Blair and Elizabeth--_married?_ She kept saying it over and
over. But it was impossible! Elizabeth was to marry David on her
birthday. "I feel as if I were going out of my mind!" Nannie told
herself, hurrying down into Mercer's black, noisy heart. When she
reached the squalor of Maitland's shantytown and saw the great
old house on the farther side of the street, looming up on its
graded embankment, black against a smoldering red sunset, she was
almost sobbing aloud, and when Harris answered her ring, she was
in such tension that she burst out at him: "Harris! where is Mr.
Blair? Do you know? Have you heard--anything?" She seized the old
man's arm and held on to it. "Where is Mr. Blair, Harris?"

"My laws, Miss Nannie! how do I know? Ain't he at the hotel?
There's a letter come for you; it come just after you went out.
Looks like it was from him. There, now, child! Don't you take on
like that! I guess if Mr. Blair can write letters, there ain't
much wrong with him."

When he brought her the letter, she made him wait there in the
dimly lighted hall until she opened it, she had a feeling that
she could not read it by herself, "Oh, Harris!" she said, and
began to tremble; "it's true! He did.... They are--oh, Harris!"
And while the old man drew her into the parlor, and scuffled
about to light the gas and bring her a glass of water, she told