Mrs. Hazeldean’s look grew severe. “Susan! I’ve often warned you against talking to him in that way--” Susan reddened, and assumed a pained expression. “How can you think it, ma’am?--me that never say anything to anybody, as all in the house will bear witness.” Her mistress made an impatient movement. “Oh, well, I daresay he won’t be long. The fire’s over.” “Ah--you knew of it too, then, ma’am?” “Of the fire? Why, of course. I _saw_ it, even--” Mrs. Hazeldean smiled. “I was walking home from Washington Square--from Miss Cecilia Winter’s--and at the corner of Twenty-third Street there was a huge crowd, and clouds of smoke.... It’s very odd that I shouldn’t have run across Mr. Hazeldean.” She looked limpidly at the parlourmaid. “But, then, of course, in all that crowd and confusion....” Half-way up the stairs she turned to call back: “Make up a good fire in the library, please, and bring the tea up. It’s too cold in the drawing-room.” The library was on the upper landing. She went in, drew the two roses from her muff, tenderly unswathed them, and put them in a slim glass on her husband’s writing-table. In the doorway she paused to smile at this touch of summer in the firelit wintry room; but a moment later her frown of anxiety reappeared. She stood listening intently for the sound of a latch-key; then, hearing nothing, passed on to her bedroom. It was a rosy room, hung with one of the new English chintzes, which also covered the deep sofa, and the bed with its rose-lined pillow-covers. The carpet was cherry red, the toilet-table ruffled and looped like a ball-dress. Ah, how she and Susan had ripped and sewn and hammered, and pieced together old scraps of lace and ribbon and muslin, in the making of that airy monument! For weeks after she had done over the room her husband never came into it without saying: “I can’t think how you managed to squeeze all this loveliness out of that last cheque of your stepmother’s.” On the dressing-table Lizzie Hazeldean noticed a long florist’s box, one end of which had been cut open to give space to the still longer stems of a bunch of roses. She snipped the string, and extracted from the box an envelope which she flung into the fire without so much as a glance at its contents. Then she pushed the flowers aside, and after rearranging her dark hair before the mirror, carefully dressed herself in a loose garment of velvet and lace which lay awaiting her on the sofa, beside her high-heeled slippers and stockings of open-work silk. She had been one of the first women in New York to have tea every afternoon at five, and to put off her walking-dress for a tea-gown. III She returned to the library, where the fire was beginning to send a bright blaze through the twilight. It flashed on the bindings of Hazeldean’s many books, and she smiled absently at the welcome it held out. A latch-key rattled, and she heard her husband’s step, and the sound of his cough below in the hall.