Avenue. She did not speak these thoughts aloud, for she had not told
her mother, not from any natural love of concealment, but because any
announcement of her plans for the afternoon would have made them seem
less certain of fulfilment. Perhaps, too, she had felt an
unacknowledged fear of certain of her mother's phrases that could
delicately puncture delight.

She had been dropped at the house by ten minutes after four, and exactly
at a quarter before five she had been in the drawing-room, in her
favorite dress, with her best slippers, her hands cold, but her heart
warm with the knowledge that he would soon be there.

Only after forty-five minutes of waiting did that faith begin to grow
dim. She was too inexperienced in such matters to know that this was the
inevitable consequence of being ready too early. She had had time to run
through the whole cycle of certainty, eagerness, doubt, and she was now
rapidly approaching despair. He was not coming. Perhaps he had never
meant to come. Possibly he had merely yielded to a polite impulse;
possibly her manner had betrayed her wishes so plainly that a clever,
older person, two or three years out of college, had only too clearly
read her in the moment when she had detained his hand at the door of the
ball-room.

There was a ring at the bell. Her heart stood perfectly still, and then
began beating with a terrible force, as if it gathered itself into a
hard, weighty lump again and again. Several minutes went by, too long for
a man to give to taking off his coat. At last she got up and cautiously
opened the door; a servant was carrying a striped cardboard box to her
mother's room. Miss Severance went back and sat down. She took a long
breath; her heart returned to its normal movement.