When the nurse brought the little girl to their door, Mrs. Green took one
hand and Grace the other, and they led her down to tea. Mrs. Maynard was
already at table, and told them all about meeting Mr. Libby abroad.

Until the present time she and Grace had not seen each other since they
were at school together in Southington, where the girl used to hear so
much to the disadvantage of her native section that she would hardly have
owned to it if her accent had not found her out. It would have been
pleasanter to befriend another person, but the little Westerner suffered
a veritable persecution, and that was enough to make Grace her friend.
Shortly after she returned home from school she married, in that casual
and tentative fashion in which so many marriages seem made. Grace had
heard of her as travelling in Europe with her husband, from whom she was
now separated. She reported that he had known Mr. Libby in his bachelor
days, and that Mr. Libby had travelled with them. Mr. Maynard appeared to
have left to Mr. Libby the arrangement of his wife's pleasures, the
supervision of her shopping, and the direction of their common journeys
and sojourns; and it seemed to have been indifferent to him whether his
friend was smoking and telling stories with him, or going with his wife
to the opera, or upon such excursions as he had no taste for. She gave
the details of the triangular intimacy with a frank unconsciousness; and
after nine o'clock she returned from a moonlight walk on the beach with
Mr. Libby.

Grace sat waiting for her at the little one's bedside, for Bella had been
afraid to go to sleep alone.

"How good you are!" cried Louise, in a grateful under-tone, as she came
in. She kissed Grace, and choked down a cough with her hand over her