With a little gasp, the sense of all this going home to her, Tootles scrambled awkwardly off the settee, dropping a book and a handkerchief. This, then, this beautiful girl who belonged to a quarter of life of which she had sometimes met the men but never the women, was Martin's wife--the wife of the man whom she loved to adoration. "Why, then, you're--you're Mrs. Gray," she stammered, her impertinence gone, her hail-fellow-well-met manner blown like a bubble. Catching sight of the message, "We count it death to falter not to die," Joan summoned her pride, put up her chin and gave a curious little bow. "Forgive me," she said, "I'm trespassing," and not daring to look at Marty, turned and went out. She heard him call her name, saw his sturdy shadow fall across the yellow patch, choked back a sob, started running, and stumbled away and away, with the blood from her heart bespattering the grasses and the wild flowers, and the fairies whimpering at her heels,--and, at last, climbing back into the room that knew and loved and understood, threw herself down on its bosom in a great agony of grief. "Be kind to me, old room, be kind to me. It's Joan-all-alone,--all alone." PART THREE THE GREAT EMOTION I Mrs. Alan Hosack, bearing a more than ever remarkable resemblance to those ship's figureheads that are still to be seen in the corners of old lumber yards, led the way out to the sun porch. Her lavish charms, her beaming manner, her clear blue eye, milky complexion, reddish hair, and the large bobbles and beads with which she insisted upon decorating herself made Howard Cannon's nickname of Cornucopia exquisitely right. She was followed by Mrs. Cooper Jekyll and a man servant, whose arms were full of dogs and books and newspapers. "The dogs on the ground, Barrett," she said, "the books and papers on the table there, my chair on the right-hand side of it and bring that chair forward for Mrs. Jekyll. We will have the lemonade at once. Tell Lestocq that I shall not want the car before lunch, ask Miss Disberry to telephone to Mrs. John Ward Harrison and say that I will have tea with her this afternoon with pleasure, and when those two good little Sisters of Mercy finally arrive,--I could see them, all sandy, struggling along the road from my room, Augusta; dear me, what a life,--they are to be given luncheon as usual and the envelope that is on the hall table. That will do, I think." The man servant was entirely convinced that it would.