“How do you do, Mr. St. John?” said the lawyer portentously.  His greeting was almost a warning, and reminded St. George of the way in which certain brakemen call out stations.  St. George responded as blithely to this name as to his own and did not correct it.  “And what,” went on the lawyer, sitting down with long unclosed hands laid trimly along his knees, “have you to contribute to this most remarkable occurrence, Mr. St. John?”

St. George briefly narrated the events of the morning and placed the slip of paper in the lawyer’s hands.

“Ah!  We have here a communication in the nature of a confession,” the lawyer observed, adjusting his gold pince-nez, head thrown back, eyebrows lifted.

“Only the address, sir,” said St. George, “and I was just saying to Mrs. Hastings that some one ought to go to this address at once and find out whatever is to be got there.  Whoever goes I will very gladly accompany.”

Mr. Frothingham had a fashion of making ready to speak and soliciting attention by the act, and then collapsing suddenly with no explosion, like a bad Roman candle.  He did this now, and whatever he meant to say was lost to the race; but he looked very wise the while.  It was rather as if he discarded you as a fit listener, than that he discarded his own comment.

“I don’t know but I ought to go myself,” rambled Mrs. Hastings, “perhaps Mr. Hastings would think I ought.  Suppose, Mr. Frothingham, that we both go.  Dear, dear!  Olivia always sees to my shopping and flowers and everything executive, but I can’t let her go into these frightful places, can I?”

There was a rustling at the far end of the room, and some one entered.  St. George did not turn, but as her soft skirts touched and lifted along the floor he was tinglingly aware of her presence.  Even before Mrs. Hastings heard her light footfall, even before the clear voice spoke, St. George knew that he was at last in the presence of the arbiter of his enterprise, and of how much else he did not know.  He was silent, breathlessly waiting for her to speak.

“May I come in, Aunt Dora?” she said.  “I want to know to what place it is impossible for me to go?”

She came from the long room’s boundary shadow.  There was about her a sense of white and gray with a knot of pale colour in her hat and an orchid on her white coat.  Mrs. Hastings, taking no more account of her presence than she had of St. George’s, tilted back her head and looked at the primroses in the window as closely as at anything, and absently presented him.

“Olivia,” she said, “this is Mr. St. John, who knows about that frightful mulatto creature.  Mr. St. George,” she went on, correcting the name entirely unintentionally, “my niece, Miss Holland.  And I’m sure I wish I knew what the necessary thing to be done is.  That is what I always tell you, you know, Olivia.  ’Find out the necessary thing and do it, and let the rest go.’”