Miss Hamilton did not go down to dinner the first day; but when she heard Mr. Granger come in, sent a line to him, excusing herself till evening, on the plea that she needed rest. The truth was, however, that she shrank from first meeting the family at table, a place which allows so little escape from embarrassment. Her door had been left ajar; and in a few minutes she heard a silken rustling on the stairs, then a faint tap; and at her summons there entered a small, lily-faced woman who looked like something that might have grown out of the pallid March evening. The silver-gray of her trailing dress, the uncertain tints of her hair, deepening from flaxen to pale brown, even the cobwebby Mechlin laces she wore, so thin as to have no color of their own--all were like light, cool shadows. This lady entered with a dainty timidity which by no means excluded the most perfect self-possession, but rather indicated an extreme solicitude for the person she visited. "Do I intrude?" she asked in a soft, hesitating way. "Mr. Granger thought I might come up. We feared that you were ill." Margaret was annoyed to feel herself blushing. There was something keen in this lady's beautiful violet eyes, underneath their superficial expression of anxious kindness. "I am not ill, only tired," she replied. "I meant to go down awhile after dinner." "I am Mrs. Lewis," the stranger announced, seating herself by the bedside. "My husband and I, and my husband's niece, Aurelia Lewis, live here. We don't call it boarding, you know. I hope that you will like us." {158} This wish was expressed in a manner so _naïve_ and earnest that Margaret could but smile in making answer that she was quite prepared to be pleased with everything, and that her only fear was lest she might disturb the harmony of their circle--not by being disagreeable in herself, but simply in being one more. With a gesture at once graceful and kind, Mrs. Lewis touched Margaret's hand with her slight, chilly fingers. "You are the one more whom we want," she said; "we have been rejoicing over the prospect of having you with us. You do not break, you complete the circle." Her quick ear had caught a lingering tone of pain; and she had already found something pathetic in that thin face and those languid eyes. Miss Hamilton did not appear to be a person likely to disturb the empire which this lady prided herself on exercising over their household. "I know very little about the family," Margaret remarked. "Mr. Granger mentioned some names. I am not sure if they were all. And men never think of the many trifles we like to be told."