“Who is it, James?—­no matter, show her in.”

He got up with the vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room.  In a minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid, frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to Dr. Renton.

“O, Mrs. Miller!  Good evening, ma’am.  Sit down,” he said, with a cold, constrained civility.

The little woman faintly said, “Good evening, Dr. Renton,” and sat down stiffly, with her hands crossed before her, in the chair nearest the wall.  This was the obdurate tenant, who had paid no rent for three months, and had a notice to quit, expiring to-morrow.

“Cold evening, ma’am,” remarked Dr. Renton, in his hard way.

“Yes, sir, it is,” was the cowed, awkward answer.

“Won’t you sit near the fire, ma’am?” said Netty, gently; “you look cold.”

“No, miss, thank you.  I’m not cold,” was the faint reply.  She was cold, though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet, in such a bitter night as it was outside.  And there was a rigid, sharp, suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have been hungry, too.  “Poor people don’t mind the cold weather, miss,” she said, with a weak smile, her voice getting a little stronger.  “They have to bear it, and they get used to it.”

She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of indifference.  Netty looked at her with a tender pity.  Dr. Renton thought to himself, Hoh!—­blazoning her poverty,—­manufacturing sympathy already,—­the old trick; and steeled himself against any attacks of that kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.

“Well, Mrs. Miller,” he said, “what is it this evening?  I suppose you’ve brought me my rent.”

The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her quivering lips.  Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.

“Nathalie, please to leave the room.”  We’ll have no nonsense carried on here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern, decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.

He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to rest on his left knee.  He did not look at his tenant’s face, determined that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should be wasted on him.

“Well, Mrs. Miller,” he said again.

“Dr. Renton,” she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded, “I have come to see you about the rent.  I am very sorry, sir, to have made you wait, but we have been unfortunate.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” he replied, knowing what was coming; “but your misfortunes are not my affair.  We all have misfortunes, ma’am.  But we must pay our debts, you know.”

“I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir,” she resumed, “and I wrote to him.  I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got it.  It was nearly three months’ wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose it.  If it hadn’t been for that your rent would have been paid long ago, sir.”