"Oh, Val," remonstrated Emmie, "and grandma ill in bed!" "That has nothing to do with it," said the invalid, shortly. "But my house is not a Family Hotel for people to come and go as they--" A sneeze spoiled the effect she was making. "There, you've caught more cold!" Emmie rushed across the room and brought a shawl. Val wanted to help put it round her. Mrs. Gano waved her off, took the shawl herself, and with some premonition, perhaps, of a coming crisis, said: "What does this mean?" "It means that at last I want to accept one of Mrs. Ball's dozen invitations. The doctor says you're better. You could telegraph me if--" "That's all very well, but in this house it is customary--" "Yes, yes, dearest; I know it's customary to ask leave, and I do ask it. But you must let me go. I--I never go anywhere, I never do anything; all my life is slipping away, just as Aunt Valeria's did." The old woman looked into the young face and read the signs there misguidedly enough to say: "Well, well, we can't very well afford it, but perhaps a little change--" "I'll make it up, you'll see." No later than that same afternoon the girl was on her way. She had given Ethan no warning--did not even know if she would find him still at the hotel from which he had written to Julia; but she drove straight to the Wharton House, learned that he was in, and sent up word that a lady wanted to see him. While she sat there, oblivious of the expensive ugliness of the empty hotel parlor, the thought of seeing Ethan after all these years did not shut out the haunting remembrance of her grandmother. If that scorner of deceptions could see her now! If she ever came to know that Val, whom she trusted, had acted this complicated lie in order, most unmaiden-like, to beg a stolen interview with a man! She cringed at the thought of the old woman's high unsparing scorn. "Why do I always think of her! Other girls don't take even their fathers and mothers so seriously. They aren't _haunted_ by them." She hunched her shoulders with discomfiture. Why didn't Ethan come? What would her grandmother say? It would be distinctly awful to be despised by her. Should she save her reputation by running away without seeing Ethan? It seemed a sudden blessed way of escape from domestic degradation. She half rose, staring absently at the sofa pattern. Suddenly the perplexed eyes widened; the vague design of the satin damask had wrought itself into her brain. Out of the scrolls and arabesques a face seemed staring at her. With a twist of pain she recognized it--that sorrowfullest of all faces--that face of some one who never had a chance. The poor dim ghost that had been shut up so long in Aunt Valeria's dusty heap of clay, that had appeared to Val like a shadowy face at a prison grating--it had escaped at last: it was here!