Listening with sudden tenseness of attention, Mrs. Conyers heard him draw the sheet from the envelope and a moment later crush it.

She placed her eyes against the shutters and watched him as he walked away; then she leaned back in her chair, thoughtful and surprised.  What was the meaning of this?  The events of the day were rapidly reviewed:  that Isabel had not spoken with her after breakfast; that she had gone to service at an unusual hour and had left the church before the sermon; that she had effaced herself at dinner and at once thereafter had gone up to her rooms, where she still remained.

Returning to the sofa she lay down, having first rung her bell.  When the maid appeared, she rubbed her eyelids and sat sleepily up as though just awakened:  she remembered that she had eavesdropped, and the maid must be persuaded that she had not.  Guilt is a bad logician.

“Where is your Miss Isabel?”

“She is in her room, Miss Henrietta.”

“Go up and tell her that I say come down into the parlors:  it is cooler down here.  And ask her whether she’d like some sherbet.  And bring me some—­bring it before you go.”

A few moments later the maid reentered with the sherbet.  She lifted the cut-glass dish from the silver waiter with soft purrings of the palate, and began to attack the minute snow mountain around the base and up the sides with eager jabs and stabs, depositing the spoonfuls upon a tongue as fresh as a child’s.  Momentarily she forgot even her annoyance; food instantly absorbed and placated her as it does the carnivora.

The maid reentered.

“She says she doesn’t wish any sherbet, Miss Henrietta.”

“Did she say she would come down?”

“She did not say, Miss Henrietta.”

“Go back and tell her I’d like to see her:  ask her to come down into the parlors.”  Then she hurried hack to the sherbet.  She wanted her granddaughter, but she wanted that first.

Her thoughts ascended meantime to Isabel in the room above.  She finished the sherbet.  She waited.  Impatience darkened to uneasiness and anger.  Still she waited; and her finger nails began to scratch audibly at the mahogany of her chair and a light to burn in the tawny eyes.

In the room overhead Isabel’s thoughts all this time were descending to her grandmother.  Before the message was delivered it had been her intention to go down.  Once she had even reached the head of the staircase; but then had faltered and shrunk back.  When the message came, it rendered her less inclined to risk the interview.  Coming at such an hour, that message was suspicious.  She, moreover, naturally had learned to dread her grandmother’s words when they looked most innocent.  Thus she, too, waited—­lacking the resolution to descend.

As she walked homeward from church she realized that she must take steps at once to discard Rowan as the duty of her social position.  And here tangible perplexities instantly wove themselves across her path.  Conscience had promptly arraigned him at the altar of religion.  It was easy to condemn him there.  And no one had the right to question that arraignment and that condemnation.  But public severance of all relations with him in her social world—­how should she accomplish that and withhold her justification?