Retracing her steps, she rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Eversley.  Before the servant could reply, Mrs. Wyeth rustled prettily down the hall from the library at the back.  She wore a gown of primrose yellow.  An unwonted animation lighted the cold perfection of her face, like fire seen through ice.

“So glad to see you!” she said with graceful effusion—­“And the Doctor?  And that queer, fascinating, puzzling brother of yours, how are they?  So glad!  Yes, poor sister keeps to her room and you really mustn’t linger with me an instant.  I’m not even going to ask you to sit down.  Go right up.  Her door’s at the end of the hall, you know.  You’ll comfort the poor thing beautifully, you dear!”

She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words.  Mrs. Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile—­a too great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms.

“Thank you so much for coming, you angel,” she went on playfully, “for doubtless I shall not be visible when you go.  You see Donald’s off in the back of the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, dusty books and he fancies that he must have my suggestions.”

“The door at the end of the hall!” she trilled in sweet but unmistakable dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but faultless.  And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth’s manner, went on upstairs.  As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley’s door, the bell of the street door sounded in her ears.

Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly out again, opening and closing the door noiselessly.  So effectually had she soothed the invalid, that the latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings are so momentous and the silence is so tense, had crept like a mouse from the room.

At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her skirts.  Then her ears seemed to catch the sound of voices on the floor below and she remained motionless for a second, listening.  She had no desire to encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth’s manner, no wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed.

No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs.  Near the bottom, opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look into the big mirror on the opposite wall.  As she turned her head for a final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror—­something that held her frozen with embarrassment.