The boy followed her, grumbling, through the long narrow hall, and as Druse turned to go, after his loud pound on the door, it suddenly flew open.  Druse stood rooted to the ground.  A dirty pink silk wrapper, with a long train covered with dirtier lace, is not a beautiful garment by full daylight.  Yet to untrained eyes it looked almost gorgeous, gathered about the handsome form.  Miss De Courcy had failed to arrange her hair for the afternoon, and it fell in heavy black folds on her shoulders, and her temples were bandaged by a white handkerchief.  Perhaps it was not strange that Druse stood and gazed at her.  The dark, brilliant eyes fixed themselves on the slight, flat-chested little form, clad in brown alpaca, on the pale hair drawn straight back from the pale face, and arranged in a tight knob at the back of the head.

A whim seized the fair wearer of the negligee.  “Come in and sit down, I want to talk to you.  There, leave the clothes, boy.  I’ll pay your mother next time,” and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl in with easy audacity.

Druse looked around the room in bewilderment.  It was not exactly dirty, but things seemed to have been thrown in their places.  The carpet was bright, and much stained, rather than worn; hideous plaques and plush decorations abounded.  A crimson chair had lost a leg, and was pushed ignominiously in a corner of the tiny room; a table was crowded with bottles and fragments of food, and a worn, velvet jacket and much-beplumed hat lay amongst them.  A ragged lace skirt hung over the blue sofa, on one corner of which Miss De Courcy threw herself down, revealing a pair of high heeled scarlet slippers.  “Sit down,” she said, in a rather metallic voice, that ill accorded with the rounded curves of face and figure.  “I’ve got a beastly headache,” pushing up the bandage on her low brow.  “What did you run for, when I opened the door?  Did your folks tell you not to come in here, ever?”

“Why, no, ma’am!” said Druse, raising her blue, flower-like eyes wonderingly.

“Oh! well,” responded Miss De Courcy, with a hoarse little laugh of amusement.  “I thought they might have—­thought maybe they objected to your making ’cquaintances without a regular introduction, you know.  Haven’t been here long, have you?”

“No,” said Druse, looking down at her tidy, with a sudden homesick thrill.  “No, I—­I come from East Green, Connecticut.  I ain’t got used to it here, much.  It’s kind o’ lonesome, days.  I s’pose you don’t mind it.  It’s different if you’re used to it, I guess.”

Somehow Druse did not feel as timid as usual, though her weak little voice, thin, like the rest of her, faltered a trifle, but then she had never called on a lady so magnificently dressed before.

“Yes, I’m pretty well used to it by this,” replied Miss De Courcy, with the same joyless little laugh, giving the lace skirt an absent-minded kick with her red morocco toe.  “I lived in the country before—­when I was little.”