Nothing resulted, and, sighing, she gave over the effort and performed a little daily ceremonial of hers, placing side by side in a row her mementoes of Mr. Bromley—the stub of the pencil he had used, the worn shoe-lace he had broken and carelessly tossed aside, the rosebud she had once asked him to smell, the violets that had dropped from his coat lapel, and the fragment of the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, broken when it fell from his pocket upon the stone steps of the school building. Dreamily, she put them all in a row, touching them gently, one after the other; then she leaned her elbows upon the desk and, with her chin in her hands, thought about life and books in a general way for several minutes. After that, as the air was warm in the room, she went to the window and opened it. Looking down moodily, she saw her sister Mildred departing. “Going home to mess around with the baby,” Cornelia thought. “That’s her life. How strange she can be contented with it!” A large red open car went by, sending forth upon the wintry air some cheerful cadences of song as it passed;—young gentlemen collegians merrymaking not indecorously in this holiday time. Cornelia looked down upon the manly young faces, rosy with the wind. “How terrible!” she murmured, dreamily. For they were no part of her mountain; her sister’s baby had nothing to do with Mr. Bromley; neither had the song from the big red car; both were dross. A negro rattled by upon an ash cart drawn by a lively mule. The negro whistled piercingly to a friend in the distance, and the mule’s splendid ears stood high and eager; he was noble in action, worthy of all attention. Cornelia could not bear him. “Oh, dear!” she said, probably thinking of his master, who was proud of him. “What lives these people lead!” She was in the act of turning away from this barren window when something far down the street caught her attention. It was the figure of a thin, somewhat middle-aged gentleman in gray clothes, approaching slowly upon the sidewalk. For a moment Cornelia was uncertain; then there appeared for an instant, beneath the rim of his soft hat, twin sparklings of reflected light. They vanished, but Cornelia needed no further proof that the gentleman in gray wore the eyeglasses that completed her identification of him. She said, “_Oh!_” in a loud voice, and clapped her joined hands over her mouth to stifle this too-eloquent revelation. Then the bright eyes above the joined hands semicircled impulsively to the bed, where lay her hat and coat as she had tossed them when she came into the room. The impulse that made her look at them increased overwhelmingly; she seized them, put them on hurriedly; opened her door with elaborate caution, tiptoed to a back stairway, descended it noiselessly, and a moment later left the house by a rear door. No one had seen her except the cook’s cat. XII HER HAPPIEST HOUR