Hagar gave her eyes to all in company. "It is right that you should say what you think. We are all too bound together for one not to be ready to listen and give weight to what the others think. But having done it, our own judgment has to determine at last, hasn't it? It seems to me that it is right to do what I am doing--what I have done, for it is practically accomplished. I saw all necessary lawyers and people last week in New York. Of course, I hope that you'll come to see it as I do, but if you do not, still I'll hope that you'll believe that I am right in doing what I hold to be right. And now don't let's talk of that any more." "What I want to know," said Miss Serena, "is how you're going to live, if you don't take your dead father's support--" Hagar looked at her in surprise. "Live? Why, live as I have lived for years--upon what I earn." "I didn't suppose you could do that.--What _do_ you earn?" "It depends. Some years more, some years less. I have published a good deal and there is a continuing sale. England and America together, I am good for something more than ten thousand a year." Miss Serena stared at her. A film seemed to come over her eyes, the muscles of her face slightly worked. "Somewhere about thirty years ago," she said painfully, "I thought I'd write a book. I'd thought of a pretty story. I wrote to a printing and publishing company in Richmond about it, but they wrote back that I'd have to _pay_ to have it printed." That night in her bedroom, plethoric with small products of needle, crochet-needle, and paint-box, Miss Serena drew down the shades of all four windows preparatory to undressing. She was upstairs, there was a thick screen of cedars and no house or hill or person who could possibly command her windows, but she would have been horribly uneasy with undrawn shades. Ready for bed, she always blew out the lamp before she again bared the windows. Some one knocked at the door. "Who is it?" called Miss Serena, her hand upon her dress-waist. "It's Hagar. May I come in?" It seemed that Hagar just wanted to talk. And she talked, with charm, of twenty things. Mostly of happenings about the old place. She asked about the latest panel of garden lilies and cat-tails, and she took the wonderfully embroidered pincushion from the bureau and admired it. "I think that I'm going to have an apartment in New York this winter, and if I do, won't you make me a pincushion? And, Aunt Serena, you must come sometimes to see me." "You'll be marrying. You ought to marry Ralph." "Even so, you could come to see me, couldn't you? But I am not going to marry Ralph." Miss Serena stiffened. "The whole family wants you to--" She was upon family authority, and the wooing had to be done all over again....