She swallowed hard. Even the prospect of Heaven was poor consolation just now. With great painstaking she directed the envelope and placed the stamp. She could not bring herself to seal it; that could wait until the last moment. It seemed to her she should then be irrevocably bound to do the thing she had promised. It would be the final link in this dreadful chain. A passing glance in the small mirror sent her to bathe her hot, tear-stained face before venturing down to the letter-box on the corner. She dallied with the towel until there was no further excuse, she brushed her hair into unaccustomed smoothness; finally she went slowly over to her little desk, and took up the envelope, at last sealing it hurriedly, lest her courage should utterly fail. She would slip out to the letter-box, and have the miserable business done with as soon as possible. She had reached the door, her hand on the knob, when she heard a step in the corridor--her mother's step. She halted guiltily, with quick intuition thrusting the letter behind her. "Polly! are you here? May I come in?" Hesitantly Polly opened the door. "Hurry off your dress, dear! Mrs. Jocelyn has sent for us to come up to dinner. She says she has been trying to get us by telephone for the last hour." "Chris is over at the hospital," volunteered Polly, slyly slipping her letter, face down, under her glove-box before running to fetch a fresh white frock. "No, he has just come home with me," Mrs. Dudley replied. "He said he couldn't persuade you to go out this afternoon. Don't you feel well? Your cheeks are flushed,--and your pulse is a little quick," her fingers on the small wrist. "Oh, I'm all right!" insisted Polly, forcing a smile, and pulling away, to guard against further questioning. Why should this invitation have come just now--to make it harder, oh, so much harder, for her to leave them all! CHAPTER XX MRS. JOCELYN'S DINNER-PARTY Leonora met Polly at the door, slipping ahead of the maid to catch her in an ecstatic embrace, and to let go a joyful whisper in her ear. "Come right up to my room! I've got something lovely to tell you!" Leonora's face was so radiant that Polly was all at once reminded of that morning at the hospital when she had first heard of her friend's adoption. What could have happened now to make her look like that? "Say," began Leonora, bubbling with news, "Colonel Gresham and David and his mother are here!" Polly's eyes grew big, and her lips puckered into a "Why!" of astonishment. "And, oh, there's lots more!" went on Leonora mysteriously. "But I'm not to tell! I promised mother I wouldn't--only just that. You'd know it anyway when you go down. Oh, Polly Dudley, I'm so tickled--there! mother told me not to say that word again!--well, happy, I mean, only it doesn't sound so perfectly splendid as I feel. It seems as if I couldn't stand it!" "I can't imagine what it is," mused Polly wonderingly.