Druse looked down. The doctor's remedy was apparently successful this
time, for with crimson cheeks and parted lips, Miss Blanche De Courcy
had forgotten her headache in a very profound slumber. Druse gazed at
her with mingled admiration and pity. No wonder the room seemed a
little untidy. She would have liked to put it to rights, but fearing she
might waken her new friend, who was now breathing very heavily, she only
pulled the shade down, and with a last compassionate glance at the
victim of a brother's intemperance, she picked up her crocheting and
tip-toed lightly from the room.

After that life in the Vere De Vere was not so dreary. Druse was not
secretive, but she had the accomplishment of silence, and she kept her
promise to the letter. Druse could not feel that she could be much
consolation to so elegant a being. Miss De Courcy was often _distraite_
when she brought her crocheting in of an afternoon, or else she was
extremely, not to say boisterously gay, and talked or laughed
incessantly, or sang at the upright piano that looked too large for the
little parlor. The songs were apt to be compositions with such titles
as, "Pretty Maggie Kelly," and "Don't Kick him when He's Down," but
Druse never heard anything more reprehensible, and she thought them
beautiful.

Sometimes, quite often indeed, her hostess had the headaches that forced
her to resort to the doctor's disagreeable remedy from the black bottle,
or was sleeping off a headache on the sofa. Miss De Courcy did not seem
to have many women friends. Once, it is true, two ladies with brilliant
golden hair, and cheeks flushed perhaps by the toilsome ascent to the
fourth floor, rustled loudly into the parlor. They were very gay, and so
finely dressed, one in a bright green plush coat, and the other in a
combination of reds, that Druse made a frightened plunge for the door