“I felt ashamed of my wind-blown hair when Lady Tu presented us with these combs,” Grace exclaimed, just before the little party reached home.  They had paid a dozen more calls since their visit to the Chinese Embassy.  “I suppose Chinese women are shocked at the way American girls wear their hair.”

“Yes, but we can’t take three hours to fix ours,” laughed Mollie, running up the steps of the Hamlin house.  In the front hall Mollie spied an immense box of roses.  They were for Harriet.  Harriet picked up the box languidly and started upstairs.  She had talked very little during the afternoon, and had seemed unlike herself.

“Aren’t you going to open your flowers, Harriet?” Mollie pleaded.  “I am crazy to see them.”

“I’ll open them if it pleases you, Mollie,” Harriet returned gently.  The great box was crowded with long-stemmed American beauties and violets.

“Have some posies, girls?” Harriet said generously, holding out her arms filled with flowers.  For a long time afterwards the “Automobile Girls” remembered how beautiful Harriet looked as she stood there, her face very pale, her black hair and hat outlined against the dark oak woodwork with the great bunch of American beauties in her arms.

“Of course we don’t want your posies, Lady Harriet,” Mollie answered affectionately.  “Here is the note to tell you who sent them to you.”  But Harriet went on to her room without showing enough interest in her gift to open the letter.

After dinner Harriet complained of a headache, and went immediately to her room.  The “Automobile Girls” were going out to a theater party, which was being given in their honor by their old friends, Mrs. Post and Hugh.  Harriet sent word she would have to be excused.  When Ruth put her head into Harriet’s room to say good-bye, just before she started for the theater, she thought she heard her cousin crying.

“Harriet, dear, do let me stay with you,” Ruth pleaded.  “I am afraid you are feeling worse than you will let us know.”

But Harriet insisted that she desired only to be left alone.  Feeling strangely unhappy about her cousin, Ruth, at last joined the theater party.

Mr. Hamlin did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson.  She had asked him, only that morning, to come.  Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter.  He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her.  She was less animated, less talkative.  Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well.  Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were in the least ill.

So it was with unusual gentleness that he tapped lightly on Harriet’s door.

“I am all right, Mary, thank you,” Harriet replied, believing her maid to be outside.  “Go to bed whenever you please.  I shall fall asleep after a while.”