"It is a secret you found out long ago!" muttered Mr. St. George, unintelligibly, and strode out, banging the door behind him. And Eloise, astonished and dismayed, abruptly put up her pencils, and went to bed. So that, when Mr. St. George returned a half-hour afterward for a cheerful fireside-season over nuts and wine, there was nobody there but Mrs. Arles, who picked herself up out of her nap, and went placidly on with her tatting and contrivances. Two stragglers on the ice-fields of the polar seas would have met each other with less frozen chill than St. George and Eloise did on the succeeding morning. And in that chill a long period elapsed, during which Mr. St. George attended to his affairs, and Eloise silently cast up her accounts. * * * * * One morning in the spring, after the last of the soft and balmy winter, Mr. St. George said to Mrs. Arles, at breakfast,-- "A dozen rooms, or more, can be ready by Wednesday? There will be guests at noon, for several weeks. That is the list. I rely on Miss Changarnier's assistance." And he handed her a paper, and went out. "It will be useless for you to keep your room now," said Mrs. Arles to Eloise, on Wednesday morning. "It isn't like Mr. St. George's bachelor parties with Marlboro' and Montgomery and Mavoisie, when I like to see you keep to yourself as you do. These are all old friends." "I shall still have my work to do," said Eloise; and she went into the cabinet and sharpened her pens with a _vim_. It would doubtless have relieved Mr. St. George of much annoyance and perplexity, if Eloise would have assumed her old place in welcoming the guests; but that was not set down in her part, and Eloise rightly felt that it would be a preposterous thing for her to do. And though, when she heard their voices in the hall, she longed just to open the door and give one glance at Laura Murray sweeping by, or draw Lottie Humphreys in through the crack and indulge in one quick squeeze, she heroically bent herself upon the debit and credit beneath her eye, and tried to forget all about it,--succeeding only in remembering who had lived and who had died since the last time that hall had rung with their voices. It was past noon when Eloise, having finished her task, and having remained for a long time with her arms upon the desk and her hands upon her eyes, suddenly glanced up and saw a gentleman entering the cabinet, where no gentleman but one was ever allowed to enter. He was in search of a book; and scanning the shelves, his eye fell on her. He hesitated for a single atom of time, then stepped rapidly forward, and said,-- "Miss Changarnier, I am quite sure." "Allow me," said quickly another voice at his shoulder, "to present to Miss Changarnier Mr. Marlboro'." For Mr. St. George had entered just in time.