Ingram, as soon as he found that Sheila was in the room, relieved her from any doubt as to his intentions.  He merely came forward, shook hands with her, and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Lavender?” and went back to the judge.  She might have been an acquaintance of yesterday or a friend of twenty years’ standing:  no one could tell by his manner.  As for Sheila, she parted with his hand reluctantly.  She tried to look, too, what she dared not say; but whatever of regret and kindness and assurance of friendship was in her eyes he did not see.  He scarcely glanced at her face:  he went off at once, and plunged again into the Cincinnati Convention.

Mrs. Kavanagh and Mrs. Lorraine were exceedingly and almost obtrusively kind to her, but she scarcely heard what they said to her.  It seemed so strange and so sad to her that her old friend should be standing near her, and she so far removed from him that she dared not go and speak to him.  She could not understand it sometimes:  everything around her seemed to get confused, until she felt as if she were sinking in a great sea, and could utter but one despairing cry as she saw the light disappear above her head.  When they went in to dinner she saw that Mr. Ingram’s seat was on Mrs. Lorraine’s right hand, and, although she could hear him speak, as he was almost right opposite to her, it seemed to her that his voice sounded as if it were far away.  The man who had taken her in was a tall, brown-whiskered and faultlessly-dressed person who never spoke, so that she was allowed to sit and listen to the conversation between Mrs. Lorraine and Ingram.  They appeared to be on excellent terms.  You would have fancied they had known each other for years.  And as Sheila sat and saw how preoccupied and pleased with his companion Mr. Ingram was, perhaps now and again the bitter question arose to her mind whether this woman, who had taken away her husband, was seeking to take away her friend also.  Sheila knew nothing of all that had happened within these past few days.  She knew only that she was alone, without either husband or friend, and it seemed to her that this pale American girl had taken both away from her.

Ingram was in one of his happiest moods, and was seeking to prove to Mrs. Lorraine that this present dinner-party ought to be an especially pleasant one.  Everybody was going away somewhere, and of course she must know that the expectation of traveling was much more delightful than the reality of it.  What could surpass the sense of freedom, of power, of hope enjoyed by the happy folks who sat down to an open atlas and began to sketch out routes for their coming holidays?  Where was he going?  Oh, he was going to the North.  Had Mrs. Lorraine never seen Edinburgh Castle rising out of a gray fog, like the ghost of some great building belonging to the times of Arthurian romance?  Had she never seen the northern twilights, and the awful gloom and wild colors of Loch Coruisk and the Skye