Peal after peal of laughter from Sybil brought Stivers to the door, pale and with distinctly frightened eyes. "In the name of heaven, what's the matter with you? Stop it! _stop it!_ You're _fey_--that's what you are! Ill will come of it--now mind!" "_Fey?_" repeated Sybil, gurgling still with laughter. "What is _fey_, Mrs. Stivers? Why, you look quite frightened!" "You laugh in a room all by yourself! You're _fey_, and that means you're sort of possessed. It's an evil spirit of mischievous fun that takes hold of you just before a stroke of bad luck comes upon you. Lord knows you've naught more to do now than to get up and smash a looking-glass!" "Don't be worried!" said Sybil, seeing the woman's distress! "I was not _fey_, because I had cause for laughter. It was this letter that amused me." "But you laughed in a room by yourself," gloomily insisted Stivers, who would not be comforted, and removed the tray rather sullenly. And Sybil laughed again and yet again, for she could not know that there was hurry and confusion at the old White house; that at the little Riverdale station, crouching at the foot of the hill beside the swift-running river, the quick tic-tic-tacking, and dot-dot-dot dashing were spelling out words of sorrow for her. But, later, as she rose from the piano and went to the window to look out, a messenger boy on the steps reached far over and stole a flower from her balcony before he rang the bell; and she laughed again, because he so nearly landed on his head in his effort to reach the blossom. She always remembered, with a sick misery, that she was laughing when she opened the telegram that said: "_Your mother has died in her sleep. Discovered an hour ago. Dorothy must not know. Come. Father._" She never remembered how she was made ready for the street. She seemed to recover her consciousness only as she found herself going into the theatre by the back way, and she wondered vaguely why she had not gone in the front. With the telegram crushed in her ungloved hand she had flown instantly to Stewart--in the first place, from the blind instinct that sends the stricken into the arms of the loved one for shelter, for comfort; and now, in the second place, she sought him for business reasons, so that he might have all the time possible in which to arrange matters theatrical during her necessary absence. She made her hurried way to Thrall's private office--that little red-walled room, where she had first met him, and where her own picture as Juliet now reigned supreme. An old cloth had been spread over the open desk, and on it lay a litter of oily rags, bits of wire, polishing powder, loose cartridges, several revolvers, a tiny pistol used by stage heroines, and Sybil's beautiful dagger.