“We always expect something unusual from James, Miss Caruthers,” he said, with his best manner, “but this—­this is beyond our wildest dreams.”

Well, it’s too awful to linger over.  Anne took her upstairs and into Bella’s bedroom.  It was a fancy of Jim’s to leave that room just as Bella had left it, dusty dance cards and favors hanging around and a pair of discarded slippers under the bed.  I don’t think it had been swept since Bella left it.  I believe in sentiment, but I like it brushed and dusted and the cobwebs off of it, and when Aunt Selina put down her bonnet, it stirred up a gray-white cloud that made her cough.  She did not say anything, but she looked around the room grimly, and I saw her run her finger over the back of a chair before she let Hannah, the maid, put her cloak on it.

Anne looked frightened.  She ran into Bella’s bath and wet the end of a towel and when Hannah was changing Aunt Selina’s collar—­her concession to evening dress—­Anne wiped off the obvious places on the furniture.  She did it stealthily, but Aunt Selina saw her in the glass.

“What’s that young woman’s name?” she asked me sharply, when Anne had taken the towel out to hide it.

“Anne Brown, Mrs. Dallas Brown,” I replied meekly.  Every one replied meekly to Aunt Selina.

“Does she live here?”

“Oh, no,” I said airily.  “They are here to dinner, she and her husband.  They are old friends of Jim’s—­and mine.”

“Seems to have a good eye for dirt,” said Aunt Selina and went on fastening her brooch.  When she was finally ready, she took a bead purse from somewhere about her waist and took out a half dollar.  She held it up before Hannah’s eyes.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said sternly, “You take off that white cap and that fol-de-rol apron and that black henrietta cloth, and put on a calico wrapper.  And when you’ve got this room aired and swept, Mrs. Wilson will give you this.”

Hannah took two steps back and caught hold of a chair; she stared helplessly from Aunt Selina to the half dollar, and then at me.  Anne was trying not to catch my eye.

“And another thing,” Aunt Selina said, from the head of the stairs, “I sent those towels over from Ireland.  Tell her to wash and bleach the one Mrs. What’s-her-name Brown used as a duster.”

Anne was quite crushed as we went down the stairs.  I turned once, half-way down, and her face was a curious mixture of guilt and hopeless wrath.  Over her shoulder, I could see Hannah, wide-eyed and puzzled, staring after us.

Jim presented everybody, and then he went into the den and closed the door and we heard him unlock the cellarette.  Aunt Selina looked at Leila’s bare shoulders and said she guessed she didn’t take cold easily, and conversation rather languished.  Max Reed was looking like a thundercloud, and he came over to me with a lowering expression that I had learned to dread in him.