“You will enter and rest awhile?”

The colonel and the little girl insisted.  For a moment the stranger seemed about to refuse.  He said he had some business for his father, about town.  Then for the child’s sake he consented.

Up the steps they went and into the dark parlor where they sat and talked a long time.  It was a curious conversation.  Afterwards they did not remember exactly what was said and yet they all remembered a certain strange satisfaction in that long, low talk.

Finally the nurse came for the reluctant child and the hostess bethought herself: 

“We will have a cup of tea; you will be dry and tired.”

She rang and switched on a blaze of light.  With one accord they all looked at the stranger, for they had hardly seen him well in the glooming twilight.  The woman started in amazement and the colonel half rose in anger.  Why, the man was a mulatto, surely; even if he did not own the Negro blood, their practised eyes knew it.  He was tall and straight and the coat looked like a Jewish gabardine.  His hair hung in close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even yellow.

A peremptory order rose to the colonel’s lips and froze there as he caught the stranger’s eyes.  Those eyes,—­where had he seen those eyes before?  He remembered them long years ago.  The soft, tear-filled eyes of a brown girl.  He remembered many things, and his face grew drawn and white.  Those eyes kept burning into him, even when they were turned half away toward the staircase, where the white figure of the child hovered with her nurse and waved good-night.  The lady sank into her chair and thought:  “What will the judge’s wife say?  How did the colonel come to invite this man here?  How shall we be rid of him?” She looked at the colonel in reproachful consternation.

Just then the door opened and the old butler came in.  He was an ancient black man, with tufted white hair, and he held before him a large, silver tray filled with a china tea service.  The stranger rose slowly and stretched forth his hands as if to bless the viands.  The old man paused in bewilderment, tottered, and then with sudden gladness in his eyes dropped to his knees, and the tray crashed to the floor.

“My Lord and my God!” he whispered; but the woman screamed:  “Mother’s china!”

The doorbell rang.

“Heavens! here is the dinner party!” exclaimed the lady.  She turned toward the door, but there in the hall, clad in her night clothes, was the little girl.  She had stolen down the stairs to see the stranger again, and the nurse above was calling in vain.  The woman felt hysterical and scolded at the nurse, but the stranger had stretched out his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them.  They caught some words about the “Kingdom of Heaven” as he slowly mounted the stairs with his little, white burden.

The mother was glad of anything to get rid of the interloper, even for a moment.  The bell rang again and she hastened toward the door, which the loitering black maid was just opening.  She did not notice the shadow of the stranger as he came slowly down the stairs and paused by the newel post, dark and silent.