Just now it was a house deserted by every one but the servants and myself. Mrs. Rossiter, having gone out to luncheon, had been careful not to return, and even the children had been sent over to Mrs. Jack Brokenshire, on the pretext of playing with her baby, but really to be out of the way. From Hugh I had had no sign of life since the previous afternoon. As to whether his father was coming as his enemy, his master, or his interpreter I could do nothing but conjecture. But as far as I could I kept myself from conjecturing; holding my faculties in suspense. I had enough to do in assuring myself that I was not afraid--fundamentally. Superficially I was terrified. I should have been terrified had the great man but passed me in the hall and cast a look at me. He had passed me in the hall on occasions, but as he had never cast the look I had escaped. He had struck me then as a master of that art of seeing without seeing which I had hitherto thought of as feminine. Even when he stopped and spoke to Gladys he seemed not to know that I occupied the ground I stood on. I cannot say I enjoyed this treatment. I was accustomed to being seen. Moreover, I had lived with people who were courteous to inferiors, however cavalier with equals. The great J. Howard was neither courteous nor cavalier toward me, for the reason that where I was he apparently saw nothing but a vacuum. Out to the loggia I took my work-basket and some sewing. Having no idea from which of the several approaches my visitor would come on me, I drew up one of the heavy arm-chairs and sat facing toward the sea. With the basket on the table beside me and my sewing in my hands I felt indefinably more mistress of myself. It was a still afternoon and hot, with scarcely a sound but the pounding of the surf on the ledges at the foot of the lawn. Though the sky was blue overhead, a dark low bank rose out of the horizon, foretelling a change of wind with fog. In the air the languorous scent of roses and honeysuckle mingled with the acrid tang of the ocean. I felt extraordinarily desolate. Not since hearing what the lawyer had told me on the afternoon of my father's funeral had I seemed so entirely alone. The fact that for nearly twenty-four hours Hugh had got no word to me threw me back upon myself. "You'll be made to feel alone," Mr. Strangways had said in the morning; and I was. I didn't blame Hugh. I had purposely left the matter in such a way that there was nothing he could say or do till after his father had spoken. He was probably waiting impatiently; I had, indeed, no doubt about that; but the fact remained that I, a girl, a stranger, in a certain sense a foreigner, was to make the best of my situation without help. J. Howard Brokenshire could grind me to powder--when he had gone away I should be dust. "If I do right, nothing but right can come of it."