The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs. Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the party. And then what would Heath do? As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs. Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right." She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned herself to a period of patience. CHAPTER VI By return there came a note hastily scribbled: "Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.--A. S." But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother, who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them. Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in, composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house, and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him. "Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed. He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by playing before sitting down to work. "Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard you playing, and knew you were in." "Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?" "No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came." Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out at the piano. "Where is she?" he said in a low voice. "In the drawing-room, sir." "All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault." He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it, looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world with which he had nothing to do. "How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury." Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly stiff. "I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and--"