reason for doing otherwise appears.  Grandmother was right.  Engaging myself to him was a mood.”  Once more she was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing, cut-and-dried thing.  “A cold bath or a rough rub-down now and then, once in a long while, is all very well.  It makes one appreciate comfort and luxury more.  But that sort of thing every day—­many times each day—­” Margaret felt her nerves rebelling as at the stroking of velvet the wrong way.

She read all her other letters, finished her toilette, had on her hat, and was having Selina put on her boots when she opened Craig’s letter and read: 

“I must have been out of my mind this afternoon.  You are wildly fascinating, but you are not for me.  If I led you to believe that I wished to marry you, pray forget it.  We should make each other unhappy and, worse still, uncomfortable.

“Do I make myself clear?  We are not engaged.  I hope you will marry Arkwright; a fine fellow, in every way suited to you, and, I happen to know, madly in love with you.  Please try to forgive me.  If you have any feeling for me stronger than friendship you will surely get over it.

“Anyhow, we couldn’t marry.  That is settled.

“Let me have an answer to this.  I shall be upset until I hear.”  No beginning.  No end.  Just a bald, brutal casting-off.  A hint—­more than a hint—­of a fear that she would try to hold him in spite of himself.  She smiled—­small, even teeth clenched and eyelids contracted cruelly—­as she read a second time, with this unflattering suggestion obtruding.  The humiliation of being jilted!  And by such a man!—­the private shame—­the public disgrace—­She sprang up, crunching her foot hard down upon one of Selina’s hands.  “What is it?” said she angrily, at her maid’s cry of pain.

“Nothing, Miss,” replied Selina, quickly hiding the wounded hand.  “You moved so quick I hadn’t time to draw away.  That was all.”

“Then finish that boot!”

Selina had to expose the hand, Margaret looked down at it indifferently, though her heel had torn the skin away from the edge of the palm and had cut into the flesh.

“Hurry!” she ordered fiercely, as Selina fumbled and bungled.

She twitched and frowned with impatience while Selina finished buttoning the boot, then descended and called Williams.  “Get me Mr. Craig on the telephone,” she said.

“He’s been calling you up several times to-day, ma’am,—­”

“Ah!” exclaimed Margaret, eyes flashing with sudden delight.

“But we wouldn’t disturb you.”

“That was right,” said Margaret.  She was beaming now, was all sunny good humor.  Even her black hair seemed to glisten in her simile.  So!  He had been calling up!  Poor fool, not to realize that she would draw the correct inference from this anxiety.

“Shall I call him?” “No.  I’ll wait.  Probably he’ll call again soon.  I’ll be in the library.”