But a shadow had settled on Mrs. Bent's face. The look which had transfigured her changed to a look of anxiety and trouble. She had years ago made wise plans for her life and Eleanor's--they had begun to seem now not wise, but insane. They were wicked, because they were made in one of the rages into which she had fallen, like her father, in her youth; they were stupid, because they had taken no account of the future; and they were selfish, because they had taken no account of anything but her own fury. When Dr. Green drove by in his buggy, Mrs. Bent laid her hand with a gesture which was almost melodramatic across her heart, and stared after him, as though the sight of him had for an instant illuminated her despair. In another instant, however, the shadow returned to her face and she bent over her sewing. Dr. Green drove by, returned and passed again, drove a mile or two into the country and passed the fourth time. He thought that Eleanor was playing, and he said, "Good for her!" He took a great deal of credit to himself for Eleanor. The afternoon light softened, shadows began to spread over the little garden. When Richard rose to go, Mrs. Bent had vanished, and the two young people looked at each other, startled and a little bewildered, trying to hide their confusion. Eleanor did not say "Come back," nor did Richard ask whether he might come again, but the volume was left open on the piano. CHAPTER VII UTTERLY SPENDS A PLEASANT EVENING Utterly sat for three hours with Eleanor Bent on her mother's porch, talking. He did not arrive until eight o'clock, which was late in Waltonville, and she had been nervously watching for him for an hour. She was consumed with impatience to hear what he had to say. If her story had not been accepted, she wished to know it at once; if, perchance, he had come to advise her to write no more--that also she wished to know at once. She did not wish the young man--if that gorgeously clad young man were really the messenger of the gods--to stay long; she needed, after the excitement of the day, to be alone, to be quiet, to touch her piano in the darkness, the piano dedicated in such a surprising and poetic way. She was too restless to play it now. She sat for a while beside her mother, who was sewing beneath the pleasant lamp; then she struck a few chords; then she went out to the porch, calling to her mother not to expect anything. "They might merely be sending an agent to town to ask people to subscribe to their old magazine, or even to ask me to be agent. John Simms has been and he is going away. That is it, I am sure, mother." When she saw approaching through the twilight the tall figure of the stranger, she summoned Mrs. Bent and let that frightened little woman greet him.