She passed her handkerchief across her lips, as if to efface some imaginary stain, and they slowly settled back into their customary stern curves.

Just then a timid tap upon the door of the reception-room was followed almost simultaneously by the entrance of Mrs. Waul, who held a card in her hand.

“The waiter has just brought this up.  What answer shall he take back?”

Mrs. Orme glanced at it, sprang to her feet, and a vivid scarlet bathed her face and neck.

“Tell him—­No! no—­no!  Madame Orme begs to decline the honour.”

Then the crimson tide as suddenly ebbed, she grew ghastly in her colourlessness, and her bloodless lips writhed, as she called after the retreating figure: 

“Stop!  Come back,—­let me think.”

She walked to the window, and stood for several moments as still as the bronze Mercury on the mantel.  When she turned around, her features were as fixed as if they belonged to some sculptured slab from Persepolis.

“Pray don’t think me weak and fickle, but indeed, Mrs. Waul, some of my laurels gash like a crown of thorns.  Tell the waiter to show this visitor up, after five minutes, and then I wish you to come back and sit with your knitting yonder, at the end of the room.  And please drop the curtain there, the pink silk will make me look a trifle less ghostly after last night’s work.  You see I am disappointed, I expected the American minister on business, and he sends this Paris beau to make his apologies; that is all.”

As the old lady disappeared, Mrs. Orme shuddered, and muttered with clenched teeth: 

“All have a Gethsemane sooner or later, and mine has overtaken me before I am quite ready.  God grant me some strengthening angel!”

She sank back into the arm chair, and drew the oval gilt table before her as a barrier, while some inexplicable, intuitive impulse prompted her to draw from her bosom a locket containing Regina’s miniature.  Touching a spring, she looked at the childish features so singularly like those she had seen the previous evening, and when Mrs. Waul returned and seated herself at the end of the room, the spring snapped, the locket lay in one hand, the minister’s card in the other.

Mrs. Orme heard the sound on the stairs and along the hall—­the well-remembered step.  Amid the tramp of a hundred she could have singled it out, so often in bygone years had she crouched under the lilacs that overhung the gate, listening for its rapid approach, waiting to throw herself into the arms that would clasp her so fondly; to-day that unaltered step smote her ears like an echo from the tomb, and for an instant her heart stood still, and she shut her eyes; but the door swung back, and Mr. Laurance stood upon the threshold.  As he advanced, she rose, and when he stood before her with outstretched hand, she ignored it, merely rested her palm on the table between them; and glancing at the card in her fingers said: