Toward the end of the second afternoon of storm, with the rain clattering on the west front of the glass room, she followed in Julia’s wake up and down among the fragile ferns. The girl’s eyes were earnestly on the flowers, but Cissy’s were everywhere—toward the window, as if expecting to see some one in the garden; prying through the curtain chinks; then, with a quick peer of curiosity, following a shadow that through the half-open door she saw crossing the library floor. Then the piano answered to compelling fingers. It had sounded much through the past two days, but now it spoke. Julia lifted her head as if it had spoken to her. She did not look over her shoulder, but frowned out into the rain, and presently went on trimming her plants. Cissy, peeping between the spikes of a dwarf palm saw through the glass the outline of a man seated, of a woman standing, her hand poised at the music-sheet on the rack. Presently she began singing, but singing with a half-voice, as if she listened, following him like an accompaniment. There was something accustomed, attuned, in their relative positions, as if they had fallen into them naturally through long habit. The significance of this touched even Cissy’s thick sensibility, but only as being the very thing she wanted. “How absorbed those people are!” she observed, with a casual nod toward the glass doors behind her. Julia gave a glance that seemed not to have noticed them before. “Mrs. Essington plays very well herself,” she threw out carelessly. “Oh, _no_!” Cissy assured her. “Only a _very_ little. But she’s so _awfully_ interested in his work—_such_ an inspiration to him in _every_ way!” “Yes?” Julia snipped off the head of a cyclamen. Cissy was angry at what seemed to her obtuseness. “The only wonder is,” she said a little acidly, “considering what she is to him, that he doesn’t marry her!” Julia raised her head from the asparagus-fern and gave Cissy a straight look. “What are you talking about?” she flashed. Her blush was to the roots of her hair. Cissy gave a little scream of mingled surprise and horror. “What _can_ you think I mean!” She reached her arm around Julia. “Of course it’s a perfectly straight affair. He’s simply waiting for her answer.” She felt the girl fairly quiver under her touch. She took one step too far. “Of course she’s years older than he, but he’s just the sort of a man to like that.” Julia removed Cissy’s arm from her waist much as she might have plucked off a spider, gathered up her little watering-pot and shears, and left the conservatory without a word. She crossed the library without glancing at the two by the piano. Cissy looked rather stunned. She looked curiously at the arm Julia had discarded. “Upon my word,” she thought, “one would suppose I was dirty!”