Cynthia Lennox pulled the chair close to the fire, and bade her hold out her little feet to the blaze to warm them well.  “I am afraid you are chilled, darling,” she said, and looked at her sitting there in her dainty little red cashmere frock, with her spread of baby-yellow hair over her shoulders.  Then Ellen thought that the lady was younger than her mother; but her mother had borne her and nursed her, and suffered and eaten of the tree of knowledge, and tasted the bitter after the sweet; and this other woman was but as a child in the garden, though she was fairly old.  But along with Ellen’s conviction of the lady’s youth had come a conviction of her power, and she yielded to her unquestioningly.  Whenever she came near her she gazed with dilating eyes upon the blazing circle of diamonds at her throat.

When she was bidden, she followed the lady into the dining-room, where the glitter of glass and silver and the soft gleam of precious china made her think for a little while that she must be in a store.  She had never seen anything like this except in a store, when she had been with her mother to buy a lamp-chimney.  So she decided this to be a store, but she said nothing.  She did not speak at all, but she ate her biscuits, and slice of breast of chicken, and sponge-cake, and drank her milk.

She had her milk in a little silver cup which seemed as if it might have belonged to another child; she also sat in a small high-chair, which made it seem as if another child had lived or visited in the house.  Ellen became singularly possessed with this sense of the presence of a child, and when the door opened she would look around for her to enter, but it was always an old black woman with a face of imperturbable bronze, which caused her to huddle closer into her chair when she drew near.

There were not many colored people in the city, and Ellen had never seen any except at Long Beach, where she had sometimes gone to have a shore dinner with her mother and Aunt Eva.  Then she always used to shrink when the black waiter drew near, and her mother and aunt would be convulsed with furtive mirth.  “See the little gump,” her mother would say in the tenderest tone, and look about to see if others at the other tables saw how cunning she was—­what a charming little goose to be afraid of a colored waiter.

Ellen saw nobody except the lady and the black woman, but she was still sure that there was a child in the house, and after supper, when she was taken up-stairs to bed, she peeped through every open door with the expectation of seeing her.

But she was so weary and sleepy that her curiosity and capacity for any other emotion was blunted.  She had become simply a little, tired, sleepy animal.  She let herself be undressed; she was not even moved to much self-pity when the lady discovered the cruel bruise on her delicate knee, and kissed it, and dressed it with a healing salve.  She was put into a little night-gown which she knew dreamily belonged to that other child, and was laid in a little bedstead which she noted to be made of gold, with floating lace over the head.