At last the door was flung open. Anne, looking pale and tired, entered the room, followed by a large, handsome girl with a heavy rope of auburn hair twisted low over her forehead. She had a frank, vulgar smile, and shallow, red-brown eyes. In her plump, large-limbed beauty she was like a well-kept cat. The day was damp and hot, and her mussed white shirt-waist clung to her broad curve of shoulder and breast. In her eyes, as she smiled at him, was the quiet ease of a conscious beauty. Beside her Anne seemed unimportant. "I'm sorry about the book, Mr. Delafield," she said, with a slow smile. "But I guess you don't know Henry very well if you think any reasonable girl would think of marrying him for a minute. The gentleman I've been keeping company with some time had a little misunderstanding with me, and 'twas more or less to spite him, I guess, that I got engaged to Henry. It never seemed to me it mattered much either way." "You have broken his heart," said Delafield stiffly. She looked vaguely at her short, fat fingers: her hands were like a baby's in shape. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "He's an awful unreasonable fellow, Henry is. He gets into such tantrums--I don't dare tell him about Mr. Winch--that's the gentleman I was speaking of. We're going to be married in the fall. He's in a livery-stable: I guess you probably noticed it as you came along Sixth Avenue--Judd and Winch. He's only junior partner, but he knows as much about running a real swell funeral as any of the uptown men--Mr. Judd says so. Henry's afraid of a horse, you know. It don't seem quite natural for a man not to know about horses, does it, now?" "If you had only waited till his book came out," said Delafield tentatively. As he looked at her he was conscious of a ridiculous satisfaction that such a fine woman should know her own mind so perfectly. She was a very complete creature, in her way. He realised that in this strangely assorted quartette he and she were involuntarily on one side of an intangible line, his niece and their unintelligible protegé on the other. "Wait? But I did wait. I waited over a week," she explained, "and then I couldn't stand it any longer. He'd drive me to drink. For one thing, Henry's changed so. When we first knew him he was really as entertaining a gentleman as I ever saw--and I've had a great deal of attention. Why, we'd sit around and laugh till we nearly died, he'd say such ridiculous things. He was so different. Ma used to say if he was much funnier she'd think he'd ought to have a keeper! The way he'd go on----!" Anne had turned her back and was looking steadily at the room they had left. Pippa and Delafield might have been alone. "But when we got engaged, he seemed to change, somehow. I don't know if you've noticed it----" Delafield nodded.