“Her room’s the third floor back,” the woman called up after the visitor, who went swiftly over the stairs, intent upon her errand, yet with a faint shudder, a sort of physical shrinking, that made her gather her cloak close about her, lest it might touch the wall or banisters. “I’m glad I told Thomas to wait,” she said to herself, thinking of the brougham at the door, with the respectable, long-suffering Thomas on the box. At the third floor back she knocked, and waited for a reply; then she knocked again. “What is it?” a muffled voice asked; “is that you, Mamie? Go ’way! I’m busy.” “It is I; Miss Wharton; a friend of your aunt’s. Let me in, Nellie.” There was a breathless pause, and then a quick step, and a bolt was snapped back. A slight, startled-looking girl stood in the doorway. Sara entered with a certain fine, regal step that she had, that gave at once a sense of the uselessness of opposing her. “Shut the door,” she commanded cheerfully, “and let me see you. Come, we will sit down and have a little talk. Oh, open that window first; there is some dreadful perfumery in the room. Ah, that’s nice; fresh air is the nicest sort of perfumery; don’t you think so?” The girl stared at her without an answer. She was a delicate-looking creature, rather pretty, except that just now her face was stained with tears, and there was a sullen look about her little pale lips. But she had fair hair in a sort of aureole around her low forehead, and shading her really beautiful eyes; and she wore a crimson silk waist,--spotted, to be sure, and ripped on the shoulder, but bringing out the fairness of her skin, and the blue veins on her delicate temples. “I’m sure I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance,” she said airily; but she was trembling. “I know your aunt, Mrs. Sherman,” her visitor said; then there was a moment’s silence. Sara Wharton looked about the untidy room,--with its banjo hung with ribbons, its looking-glass rimmed with cards and tintypes stuck edgewise within the frame; its litter of cigarette ends, and its half-empty, uncorked bottle of beer on the marble-topped centre-table. “Your aunt told me about you, my child,” she said, with a deep, kind look full into the girl’s face. The color rushed into Nellie’s pale cheeks; but she only said, with vast indifference, “Is that so? Well, she’s very kind, I’m sure.” “I don’t know that she has always been very kind,” Sara Wharton answered thoughtfully. “Now shut that window behind you; I don’t want you to sit in a draft; and the fresh air has driven out the perfumery. Why do you use perfumery, Nellie? Nice girls don’t.” The girl looked at her blankly.