"Throw off your hat, Malise," suggested Molly. "Celeste, take her parasol from that chair. There is so much to hear about. I asked la femme de charge, when she was in this morning, if she'd ever heard of the Blairs. Everybody used to know everything about everybody when I was here before and the servants most of all, and, mon Dieu, she knew all about them. 'Miss Blair is married,' she told me. 'I know that,' said I, for you'd mentioned that much in your letter, Malise. 'She ran off to get married,' said she. 'Oh, hush,' I told her." She had retained her very colloquialisms, this Molly, too unconscious and too indolent to know she had them, probably, or to care. "So she told me all about it, how tall, cold, proper Harriet had run off from Blair proprieties and Austen, to marry a Southerner and a Catholic! It's as if the virgin in marble had stepped down and done it!" Molly was amused. It narrowed her eyes till they laughed through the lashes. "I never heard anything so funny in my life, Malise, as--as Harriet eloping. What is it Jean Garnier would quote from his adored Shakespeare about Diana and her icicles? Make me stop! It hurts me--to laugh. Oh-o-h, mammy--God, mammy!" The appeal died in a little choke, and the morsel of handkerchief pressed to her mouth showed a spot of crimson, but Celeste was already there, putting Alexina aside. "You can ring fo' lil' ice--yonder," she told the girl jealously. "Then, efen I were lil' missy, I'd go in there--that one is yo' room--an' I'd shet my do'h. When it's over with, p'tite won't want fo' you to have been in heah." But pushed into the adjoining room and with the door shut between, Malise still could hear. She did not want to hear; she tried not to hear. She was awed and frightened. "Am I going to die this time, Celeste? I'm afraid, mammy; my hands are cold. Don't rub them with the rings on, you fool; you hurt. No, no; don't go away, mammy! mammy! I couldn't sleep last night; that's why I'm--I'm tired. The night was so long and I was afraid. I see Jean when I try to sleep. I hear him cough. Give me something to make me sleep--oh, mammy, give it to me." The girl in the next room stood gazing out the window over the roofs and chimney stacks at the yellow tide of the river sweeping down towards the pier bridge spanning it, but she was not seeing it. She was filled with pity and terror. It grew quieter in the next room, then still, then the door between opened and closed. It was Celeste, outwardly unmoved and taciturn. "P'tite's gone to sleep. Shall I help lil' missy unpack her things?" CHAPTER SEVEN Summer in a half-grown Southern city is full of charm; pretty girls in muslin dresses stroll the shopping streets and stop on the sidewalks to chat with each other and with callow youths; picnic parties board the street cars, and in the evenings sounds of music and dancing float out from open doors and windows along the residence streets.