Mrs. Hazard, looking across the shoulders of a knot of her guests, caught a glimpse of Rutledge as he passed down the hall toward the outer door. She waited a minute or more for him to reappear, and when he had not done so she lost interest in the people and things about her. At the first possible moment she sought Elise, and found her again sitting before the grate. Lola came into the room so quickly and quietly that Elise had not time to dissemble, if she had wished to do so. Her head was thrown back against the chair and both hands covered her face. Lola took her wrists and against some little resistance pulled her hands away. "Elise?" she said. "He does not love me," Elise replied, defensively, without opening her eyes. "Didn’t he tell you?" "Oh, yes," the answer came wearily; "he told me; but he told me because he thought he had given me to expect it. It was _noblesse oblige_—not love." "Noblesse fiddlesticks! I don’t believe a word of it." "Oh well," said Elise, looking up, "he said it was just as well that I refused him, there’s no mistaking that." "Oh, certainly, _after_ you refused him. What did you expect?" "I expected him to—no, I didn’t. I didn’t expect anything. Southern men are so—" Elise stopped. She was about to be unjust to Rutledge. "But come, let’s go," she said, rising from her chair. "Are all the people here?" "All except Senator Richland, and he never fails _me_," Lola answered. "I don’t want to see that man to-night," said Elise; and yet she joined the other guests appearing nothing other than her usual self save for the added brightness of her eyes, and when Senator Richland managed finally to isolate her she gave him quite the most interesting twenty minutes of his life. When the company was broken up, Elise, who was stopping over night with Lola, avoided the customary heart to heart talk by asking for a pen and paper with which to write a letter. Mrs. Hazard was consumed with desire to hear all about it, but she deferred her inquiries with good grace as she argued that a note written by Elise at such an unearthly hour could be only to Rutledge, and must, therefore, be important. Elise shut herself in her room and, pitching the paper on the dressing-table, sat down to think. For nearly an hour she sat without turning a hand to undress, trying to unravel the tangled skein of her heart’s affairs and see a way out; but she could not get her thoughts to the main issue. Like a fiery barrier to her thinking was the man’s burning denunciation: "You are false—unspeakably false!" It had rung in her ears all the evening, and however she tried she could not get away from it. At last she began hurriedly to undress, but before that process was half finished she brushed the toilet articles from a corner of the dressing-table, drew up a chair, and began to write.