She began to take off her things; then realized that she was shivering. The few minutes of stirring the fire which was smoldering under a great lump of coal between the brass jambs of the grate, gave her the momentary relief of occupation; but when she sat down in the shifting firelight, and held her trembling hands toward the blaze, the shame and fright came back again. "Poor David!" she said; but even as she said it she defended her brother; "if Elizabeth had broken with him, of course Blair had a right to marry her. But how _could_ Elizabeth! I can never forgive her!" Nannie thought, wincing with disgust. "To be engaged to David one day, and marry Blair the next!--Oh, Blair ought not to have done it," she said, involuntarily; and hid her face in her hands. But it was so intolerable to her to blame him, that she drove her mind back to Elizabeth's vulgarity; she could bear what had happened if she thought of Blair as a victim and not as an offender. "I can never feel the same to Elizabeth again," she said. Then she remembered what her brother had bidden her do, and quailed. For a moment she was actually sick with panic. Then she, too, knew the impulse to get the tooth pulled "quick." She got up and went swiftly across the hall to the dining-room. It was empty, except for Harris, who was moving some papers from the table to set it for supper. "Oh, Harris," she said, with a gasp of relief, "she isn't here! Harris, I have got to tell her. You don't think she'll mind much, do you?" But by this time Harris's chuckling appreciation of Mr. Blair's cleverness in getting in ahead had evaporated. "My, my, my, Miss Nannie!" he said, his weak blue eyes blinking with fright, "_I_ wouldn't tell her, not if you'd gimme the Works!" "Harris, if you were in my place, would you try to, at supper?" "Now, Miss, how can I tell? She'll be wild; my, my; wild!" "I don't see why. Mr. Blair had a right to get married." "He'd ought to have let on to her about it," Harris said. For a few minutes Nannie was stricken dumb. Then she sought encouragement again: "Perhaps if you had something nice for supper, she'd be--pleased, you know, and take it better?" "There's to be cabbage. Maybe that will soften her up. She likes it; gor, how she likes cabbage!" said Harris, almost weeping. "Harris, how do you think she'll take it?" "She won't take it well," the old man said. "Miss Elizabeth was Mr. David's girl. When I come to think it over, I don't take it well myself, Miss Nannie. Nor you don't, neither. No, she won't take it well." "But Miss Elizabeth had broken with Mr. David," Nannie defended her brother; "Mr. Blair had a right--" then she shivered. "But _I've_ got to tell her! Oh, Harris, I think she wouldn't mind so much, if he told her himself?"