The door opened as if yielding under protest, and Marthy entered, still hurriedly tying the strings of the clean apron she had slipped on over her soiled one before answering the door-bell. "Yo' beau done come, Miss Ella. Ain't you gwine?" "No, I'm not going to the party, Marthy, but ask him to wait just a minute." "He's settin' over yonder in de parlour wid his overcoat on." "Well, ask him to take it off; I'll be there in a moment." She spoke as gravely as Marthy had done, yet in her face there was a light play of humour. Two years ago she would have thrilled with joy at the thought that Arthur was waiting for her; but in those two years since her engagement she had grown to look upon her first love as the gossamer, fairylike romance of a child. For months she had known that the engagement must be broken sooner or later; and she knew now, while she listened to Marthy's shuffling feet hastening to deliver her message, that she must break it to-night. In the dim pool of her mirror a face looked back at her that was not the face of Arthur Peyton; she saw it take form there as one sees a face grow gradually into life from the dimness of dreams. It was, she told herself to-night, the very face of her dream that she saw. "Well, I must get it over," she said with a sternness which gave her a passing resemblance to the Saint Memin portrait of the Reverend Bartholomew Berkeley; "I've got to get it over to-night, and whatever happens I've got to be honest." Then, with a last glance at the sleeping children, she lowered the gas, and went across the darkened hail, which smelt of pickles and bacon because one end of it was used as a storeroom. The parlour had been swept since the family council had deliberated there over Jane's destiny. The scraps of cambric had been gathered up from the threadbare arabesques in the carpet; the chairs had been placed at respectable distances apart; the gas-jets in the chandelier were flaming extravagantly under the damaged garlands; and the sewing machine had been wheeled into the obscurity of the hail, for it would have humiliated Gabriella's mother to think that her daughter received young men in a room which looked as if somebody had worked there.