Just then a clock on the opposite mantel gave one little silver note that told it was half-past twelve. Claire rose as she heard the sound. "I must leave you now," she pursued. "I have only an hour left for my toilette, and I shall need it all." She threw back her head, and a dreary smile gleamed and fled along her lips. "I mean to meet all these grand ladies without one sign of defeat. I shan't wear my heart on my sleeve. This lunch was to have been my crowning triumph. It proves a funeral-feast, in its way, but they shan't find me playing chief-mourner. I intend to die game, as the phrase is." She gave a slight shudder, drooping her eyes. "It will be as though I stood in a house whose walls might crumble all about me at any moment--as if I could hear the crack of plaster and the creak of beams. But I shan't run away; I shall stand my ground very firmly, depend on it, until the bitter end. When the crash comes nobody will be buried in the ruins but myself--that is certain, is it not?" Here her joyless laugh again sounded, and Thurston, swayed by an irresistible mood, caught one of her hands, pressing it hard within his own. "You shall not be buried in the ruins!" he exclaimed. "Take my word for it, you shall not! It will all only be the beginning of a new and better life. You shall have learned a hard yet salutary lesson--that, and nothing more." She shook her head, meeting his earnest eyes. "You are my good genius," she said. "It is too bad you have not had more power over me." "Who is your evil genius?" he asked, with slower tones, while she drew her hand from his. "Myself," she answered. "I am quite willing to concede it." ... She appeared to muse for a little while. "I shall have one true friend here to-day," she soon continued. "I mean Mrs. Diggs. She is very loyal to me; she would do almost anything I should ask. You don't like her, or so she tells me, but I hope you will like her better than your other cousin, Mrs. Lee." "I respect her far more. I have never doubted her goodness. But she gives me nerves, as the French say. She is at such a perpetual gallop; if she would only break into a trot, sometimes, it would be like anybody else's walk.... You think you can trust her as an ally to-day?" "Implicitly. She has promised to come early, too--before the others, you know." ... Claire locked the fingers of both hands together, and held them so that the palms were bent downward. The weary smile again touched her lips and vanished. "What a day it is to be! And what a day it _might_ have been!" She held out her hand to him, after that. "Good-by. With all my heart I thank you! You have done all that you could do." He did not promptly reply. He was thinking whether he had really done all that he could do.... And this thought followed him hauntingly as he left Claire to meet whatever catastrophe fate had in store for her.