Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at any time, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now she was ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hall abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and work-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves. From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" and with the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face was curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing out under her eyes. "Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wanted to see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh, no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit on the bed." Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster. Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully, and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were trying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored. "I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last. "Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ella paradoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?" "You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella, you've been crying!" "Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showed a tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to me to think you've been living so long in the same house with her." Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?" "If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," said Ella distinctly. Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of her little shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, her lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secret thought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara's performance at the Bullers'. "Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning back in her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always getting something. It's awful. It was the same even when we were at boarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though her people were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations and rides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through Lillie Lewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but she didn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked him until he went under and they found there really was no money. So she's been living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.