The weather was very cold. A bright fire burned in the grate. A chandelier of four lights overhead left scarcely a shadow in this cheap little parlor. Everything in it glared. The white walls stared you out of countenance. The golden-oak piano turned a broadside of yellow brilliance across the flowered rug. The whatnot showed off. The spindle-back sofa fairly twinkled varnish. Inanimate things can sometimes produce the impression of tittering excitement. The furniture in this pop-eyed room seemed to be expecting company. Only the two mahogany armchairs on either side of the fireplace preserved their gravity and indifference, as if they had been born and bred to be sat in by the best people. Shippen saw all this at a glance; at least he felt it without knowing what ailed him. Later he was to quail in a sort of artistic anguish beneath the cold, calm, crayon gaze of that excellent carpenter, the late Sam Adams, whose portrait still hung above the mantel. And he was to feel the colder, grimmer crayon eyes of the late Mrs. Mary Adams piercing him between the shoulder blades from the opposite wall. But that which riveted his attention this first moment when he entered the room with Cutter was Mrs. Cutter. She stood on the rug before the fire, a slim figure, but not tall. She was wearing a cloth gown of the palest rose lavender, the bodice cut low, fitting close to her white shoulders, lace on it somewhere like a mist, a wildly disheveled bow of twisted black velvet that seemed to strike at him, it was so vivid by contrast with all this gem paleness of color. A necklace of opals, very small and bound together by the thinnest thread of gold, with a pendant lay upon her breast. Her pale blond hair was dressed simply, bound about her head like piety, not a crown. No color in her skin, only the soft pink lips, sweetened somehow by that pointed flute in the upper lip, long sweeping brows, darker than her hair, spread like slender wings above the wide open blue eyes, seeing all things gravely, neither asking nor giving confidences. “This is Mr. Shippen, Helen. My wife, Shippen,” George finished cheerfully. He had made a hasty survey of Helen. She would do, he decided, if only she would go, move off, say the right thing. Helen offered her hand. She was glad to meet Mr. Shippen. He bowed over this hand, very glad, and so forth and so on.