Lily sprang up.  “I am going home,” said she.

“Going home?  Why?”

“He has come to see you, and I won’t stay.  I won’t.  I know you despised me for what I did the other night, and I won’t do such a thing as to stay when he has come to see another girl.  I am not quite as bad as that.”  Lily started towards her cloak, which lay over a chair.

Maria seized her by the shoulders with a nervous grip of her little hands.  “Lily Merrill,” said she, “if you stir, if you dare to stir to go home, I will not go to the door at all!”

Lily gasped and looked at her.

“I won’t!” said Maria.

The bell rang a second time.

“You have got to go to the door,” said Maria, with a sudden impulse.

Lily quivered under her hands.

“Why?  Oh, Maria!”

“Yes, you have.  You go to the door, and I will run up-stairs the back way to my room.  I don’t feel well to-night, anyway.  I have an awful headache.  You go to the door, and if it is—­George Ramsey, you tell him I have gone to bed with a headache, and you have come over to stay with me because Aunt Maria has gone away.  Then you can ask him in.”

A flush of incredulous joy came over Lily’s face.

“You don’t mean it, Maria?” she whispered, faintly.

“Yes, I do.  Hurry, or he’ll go away.”

“Have you got a headache, honest?”

“Yes, I have.  Hurry, quick!  If it is anybody else do as you like about asking him in.  Hurry!”

With that Maria was gone, scudding up the back stairs which led out of the adjoining room.  She gained her chamber as noiselessly as a shadow.  The room was very dark except for a faint gleam on one wall from a neighbor’s lamp.  Maria stood still, listening, in the middle of the floor.  She heard the front door opened, then she heard voices.  She heard steps.  The steps entered the sitting-room.  Then she heard the voices in a steady flow.  One of them was undoubtedly a man’s.  The bass resonances were unmistakable.  A peal of girlish laughter rang out.  Maria noiselessly groped her way to her bed, threw herself upon it, face down, and lay there shaking with silent sobs.

Chapter XXII

Maria did not hear Lily laugh again, although the conversation continued.  In reality, Lily was in a state of extreme shyness, and was, moreover, filled with a sense of wrong-doing.  There had been something about Maria’s denial which had not convinced her.  In her heart of hearts, the heart of hearts of a foolish but loving girl, who never meant anybody any harm, and, on the contrary, wished everybody well, although naturally herself first, she was quite sure that Maria also loved George Ramsey.  She drooped before him with this consciousness when she opened the door, and the young man naturally started with a little surprise at the sight of her.