grandmother's. She shrank back shuddering from what she saw there,
burying her face in her hands; then rising she hurried from the
room,

Mrs. Conyers sat motionless.

Was it true then that the desire and the work of years for this
marriage had come to nothing? And was it true that this
grandchild, for whom she had planned and plotted, did not even
respect her and could tell her so to her face?

Those insulting words rang in her ears still: "_You must give me
your word of honor . . . it is too late to be sensitive about our
characters_."

She sat perfectly still: and in the parlors there might have been
heard at intervals the scratching of her sharp finger nails against
the wood of the chair.




IV

The hot day ended. Toward sunset a thunder-shower drenched the
earth, and the night had begun cool and refreshing.

Mrs. Conyers was sitting on the front veranda, waiting for
her regular Sunday evening visitor. She was no longer the
self-revealed woman of the afternoon, but seemingly an affable,