“I know what you mean. I wouldn’t, of course, ask Mrs. Ware to concern herself actively in the matter, or to know any more about it than she wanted to. But we could depend on her to keep her own counsel. Charlotte need not know anything about it--although she’d be pretty sure to find out all about it before long. Then she’d tell me frequently and forcibly, just what kind of a pickpocket she considers me--” He stopped a moment, smiling indulgently, but went on, conviction in his tone: “But she wouldn’t tell. She’d be loyal to me. And as for my colored man Jim and his wife Lizzie, in the kitchen, they’ll do anything under the sun to help the thing along. They bought their freedom, only a few years ago. I think, Horace, it will be all right!” Rhoda found her mother and sister in the big, cool sitting-room, Mrs. Ware darning stockings and Charlotte at the piano, playing “The Battle of Prague.” She wheeled round at Rhoda’s announcement of the guest for dinner. “That Black Abolitionist!” she exclaimed scornfully, her eyes flashing. “I shall not sit at the table with him!” “Charlotte!” her mother chided. “Your father’s guest! Be ashamed!” “Why don’t you decline to sit at the table with father?” Rhoda asked quietly, but with an unaccustomed tone in her voice that made the other look at her sharply. Her face and manner still betrayed signs of her recent agitation. Charlotte saw them and wondered if anything had been happening between her and Horace Hardaker. She did not know that he had more than once plead his suit with Rhoda and had been denied. “Where is he now?” she asked. “In the office, with father.” Had he then been making love to Rhoda and was he now getting the matter settled with their father? Then it would be impossible not to be present at the dinner table. But for the present she would stick to her guns. She rose and moved toward the door, giving her hoopskirts an angry swish. “No!” she paused to say, with emphasis, “you cannot expect me, thinking as I do about Horace Hardaker, to sit at the same table with him. I shall ask Lizzie to save my dinner for me and eat it after he goes away.” But when they met in the dining-room Charlotte was already there, arranging flowers on the table, a rose in her hair and another at her throat and Hardaker’s place set beside her own. At first his manner toward her was courteous, though formal, but as the meal progressed and she smiled upon him, rallied him, and talked to him and at him with audacious little speeches, his reserve melted and his attention was gradually centered upon her. Every now and then she stole a glance at Rhoda, secretly wondering and discomfited that her sister did not seem more disturbed or make some effort to prevent her from monopolizing Hardaker’s attention. She reassured herself with thinking, “But she never does show things out much.”