On hearing a rustle, she hurriedly laid down the music, and got up, her heart rushing. Miss Cheriton had shaken hands, with expressions of pleasure in making her acquaintance, had offered her a seat, and taken one, before Marie-Aimée had been able to do more than clear her throat. Miss Cheriton had allotted her a seat well in the lights; her curiosity about this caller could do no less; wherefore Marie-Aimée's reddened eyes at first refused a square encounter. But shortly, while Miss Cheriton was forcing a dullish conversation, Marie-Aimée forgot herself, and looked Miss Cheriton in the face; full as interested as she in the looks of the other at close range. Marie-Aimée saw a well-grown young woman of eight or nine and twenty; faultlessly dressed in a fawn colored cloth matching her perfectly arranged abundant hair. Her face was entirely fine, if a little cold. She gave an impression of great self-poise; she could be imagined to have always thought and decided for herself, and had the fortune to see everything go as she wished, which no doubt she laid to the firm and just management she looked so capable of exercising. She had a beautiful calm complexion and calm dark-blue eyes, which weighed you thoughtfully, and would with difficulty, you fancied, alter their conclusions about you. But at least, Marie-Aimée felt with relief and hope, they were windows into a mind where there was room to breathe. She began abruptly, in a suggestive pause occurring in Miss Cheriton's small talk, "You must be wondering what brought me." The expression of Miss Cheriton's face, her only answer to this, signified that though she hoped she had not seemed to be wondering rudely, she would in effect be pleased to know. Marie-Aimée picked at her glove. "It is this. I was told that I had been making mischief. And I came, wishing if possible to remedy it." Miss Cheriton's eyebrows moved upward just enough to start a ripple in the beautiful smoothness of her forehead, and she waited, her eyes inquiring of Miss Nevers' troubled face; in their depths had flashed a prevision of what might be coming. "I know I talk a dreadful lot," Marie-Aimée burst forth in disgust, "I tell everything I know. I can't keep to myself even stories that are against myself. Whatever is on my heart, I say it. I have been making a dreadful fool of myself--which is bad enough, but I feel worse about having given annoyance to others.... Mr. Bronson came to see me yesterday evening." She paused, as after a piece of news. Miss Cheriton waited in silence, her face expressing nothing beyond polite attention. "And he said that my doing as I have been doing made a lot of gossip, which inevitably reached you, and was calculated to give you a mistaken impression of our relations in the past----" Marie-Aimée's voice stuck.