Honora was at once conscious of the need for his contrition and of the fact that she had never heard a more entertaining statement. It was evident that he viewed her as a desirable compound of the women of the El Dorado and Olive Stanes: an adroit and sincere compliment. She wanted to follow it on and on, unfold its every exposition; but, of course, that was impossible. All this she concealed behind an indifferent countenance, her slim white fingers half embedded in the black mantle. Jason Burrage lighted another cheroot and put his feet up on the polished brass railing of the iron hearth. This amused her beyond words. She couldn't remember when she had had another such vitalized evening. She realized that, through the last years, she had been appallingly lonely; but with Jason smoking beside her in a tilted chair the solitude was banished. She got a coal for him in the small burnished tongs, and he responded with a prodigious puff that set her to coughing. When he had gone the house was hatefully vacant; as she went up to her chamber the empty spaciousness, the semi-dark well of the stair, the high hall with its low-turned lamp, the blackness of the third story pouring down over her, oppressed her almost beyond endurance. Her Aunt Herriot, already old, must be dead before very long, there was none other of her connections who could live with her, and she would have to depend on perfunctory, hired companionship. Honora saw that she should never escape from the influence which held her in Cottarsport. In her room, the door bolted, it was no better. The interior was large, uncompromisingly square; and, though every possible light was burning, still it seemed somber, menacing. The following day was a lowering void with gusts of rain driving against the windows. Mrs. Cozzens would be away until tomorrow, and Honora met the afternoon alone. At times she embroidered, short-lived efforts broken by despondent and aimless excursions through the echoing halls. She attempted to read, to compose herself with an elaborate gilt and embellished volume called “The Garland.” But, at a Lamentation on the Death of Her Canary, by a Person of Quality, she deliberately dropped the book into the burning coals of the Franklin stove. The satisfaction of seeing the pages crisp and burst into flame soon evaporated. The day was a calamity, the approaching murky evening a horror. At supper she wondered what Jason Burrage was doing. A trace of the odor of his cheroot lingered in the dining room. He was an astonishingly solid, the only, actuality in a nebulous world of lofty, flickering ceilings and the lash of rain. He might as well smoke in her drawing room as in the Burrage kitchen. Paret Fifield would have drifted naturally to the Canderay house, but not Jason, not a native of Cottarsport.... With an air of determination she sharply pulled the plush, tasseled bell rope in the corner. *****