It was in Mrs. Mant’s drawing-room that, some half-year later, Mrs. Charles Hazeldean, after a moment’s hesitation, said to the servant that, yes, he might show in Mr. Prest.

Mrs. Mant was away. She had been leaving for Washington to visit a new protégée when Mrs. Hazeldean arrived from Europe, and after a rapid consultation with the clan had decided that it would not be “decent” to let poor Charles’s widow go to an hotel. Lizzie had therefore the strange sensation of returning, after nearly nine years, to the house from which her husband had triumphantly rescued her; of returning there, to be sure, in comparative independence, and without danger of falling into her former bondage, yet with every nerve shrinking from all that the scene revived.

Mrs. Mant, the next day, had left for Washington; but before starting she had tossed a note across the breakfast-table to her visitor.

“Very proper — he was one of Charlie’s oldest friends, I believe?” she said, with her mild frosty smile. Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the note, turned it over as if to examine the signature, and restored it to her hostess.

“Yes. But I don’t think I care to see anyone just yet.”

There was a pause, during which the butler brought in fresh griddle-cakes, replenished the hot milk, and withdrew. As the door closed on him, Mrs. Mant said, with a dangerous cordiality: “No one would misunderstand your receiving an old friend of your husband’s . . . like Mr. Prest.”

Lizzie Hazeldean cast a sharp glance at the large empty mysterious face across the table. They WANTED her to receive Henry Prest, then? Ah, well . . . perhaps she understood . . .

“Shall I answer this for you, my dear? Or will you?” Mrs. Mant pursued.

“Oh, as you like. But don’t fix a day, please. Later — ”

Mrs. Mant’s face again became vacuous. She murmured: “You must not shut yourself up too much. It will not do to be morbid. I’m sorry to have to leave you here alone — ”

Lizzie’s eyes filled: Mrs. Mant’s sympathy seemed more cruel than her cruelty. Every word that she used had a veiled taunt for its counterpart.

“Oh, you mustn’t think of giving up your visit — ”

“My dear, how can I? It’s a DUTY. I’ll send a line to Henry Prest, then . . . If you would sip a little port at luncheon and dinner we should have you looking less like a ghost . . . ”

Mrs. Mant departed; and two days later — the interval was “decent” — Mr. Henry Prest was announced. Mrs. Hazeldean had not seen him since the previous New Year’s day. Their last words had been exchanged in Mrs. Struthers’s crimson boudoir, and since then half a year had elapsed. Charles Hazeldean had lingered for a fortnight; but though there had been ups and downs, and intervals of hope when none could have criticised his wife for seeing her friends, her door had been barred against everyone. She had not excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than the others; he had simply been one of the many who received, day by day, the same answer: “Mrs. Hazeldean sees no one but the family.”

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