Mrs. Maitland came over to the table and picked up the letters. "That's all. Now clear out, clear out! I've got a lot to do!" Then her eye fell on one of the signatures, and she gave her grunt of a laugh. "If you hadn't put 'Per N. M.,' I shouldn't have known that I hadn't signed 'em myself ... Nannie." "Yes, Mamma?" "Is Blair going to be at home to supper?" "I think not. But he said he would be in this evening. And he wanted me to--to ask--" "Well, perhaps I'll come over to your parlor to see him, if I get through with my work. I believe he goes East again to-morrow?" "Yes," Nannie said. Mrs. Maitland, at her desk, had begun to write. Nannie wavered for a minute, then, with a despairing look at the back of her stepmother's head, slipped away to her own part of the house. "I'll tell her at supper," she promised herself. But in her own room, as she dressed for tea, panic fell upon her. She began to walk nervously about; once she stopped, and leaning her forehead against the window, looked absently into the dusk. At the end of the cinder path, the vast pile of the foundry rose black against the fading sky; on the left the open arches of the cast-house of the furnace glowed with molten iron that was running into pigs on the wide stretch of sand. The spur track was banked with desolate wastes of slag and rubbish; beyond them, like an enfolding arm, was the river, dark in the darkening twilight. From under half-shut dampers flat sheets of sapphire and orange flame roared out in rhythmical pulsations, and above them was the pillar of smoke shot through with flying billions of sparks; back of this monstrous and ordered confusion was the solemn circling line of hills. It was all hideous and fierce, yet in the clear winter dusk it had a beauty of its own that held Nannie Maitland, even though she was too accustomed to it to be conscious of its details. As she stared out at it with troubled eyes, there was a knock at her door; before she could say "Come in," her stepmother entered. "Here!" Mrs. Maitland said, "just fix this waist, will you? I can't seem to--to make it look right." There was a dull flush on her cheek, and she spoke in cross confusion. "Haven't you got a piece of lace, or something; I don't care what. This black dress seems--" she broke off and glanced into the mirror; she was embarrassed, but doggedly determined. "Make me look--somehow," she said. Nannie, assenting, and rummaging in her bureau drawer, had a flash of understanding. "She's dressing up for Blair!" She took out a piece of lace, and laid it about the gaunt shoulders; then tucked the front of the dress in, and brought the lace down on each side. The soft old thread seemed as inappropriate as it would have been if laid on a scarcely cooled steel "bloom." "Well, pin it, can't you?" Mrs. Maitland said sharply; "haven't you got some kind of a brooch?" Nannie silently produced a little amethyst pin. "It doesn't just suit the dress, I'm afraid," she ventured.