"Oh, there you are, old fellow; I'm in luck after all. You see I walked over to my farm on the back road," he explained, "intending to take the half-past three train to New York, but I missed it. So I said to myself, 'I'll cut across the fields, down the hill, and stop at Mellen's, beg a dinner, and get him to send me over in time for the five o'clock train'—wasn't a bad idea, eh?"
"A very good idea on the contrary," Mellen answered, with a desperate attempt at hospitality, while the visitor wrung his hand again and burst into shouts of laughter, as if some wonderfully good joke lay in the affair. "And how is your good lady?" he asked. "And the pretty little sister—quite well, eh?"
"Tolerably so," Mellen answered; "complains of headache and that sort of thing."
He conducted his guest into the library, and meeting Dolf in the hall, directed him to inform his mistress of the arrival.
Mellen made an effort to be civil though the man was tiresome in the extreme; perhaps it was better to endure his society than to meet his wife that day without the restraint of a stranger's presence.
Indeed, without some of those social restraints to which all men are more or less slaves, it is doubtful if Mellen could have appeared so perfectly calm. As it was, the fire that consumed him raged unseen. Dolf carried his message upstairs, where it was received with a little shriek from Elsie, and blank dismay on the part of Elizabeth.
"I can't go down," she said; "Elsie, you must take my place at the table. Say that I am ill, fainting, anything."
"Indeed, I'll do nothing of the sort," returned Elsie; "if you don't go down I shall stay with you. I am nervous as I can be, and if you are not at the table I shall break down completely."
The girl was full of selfishness to the very last—not willing to yield her comfort in the slightest particular, but Elizabeth only sighed as she observed it, and said, quietly:
"After all, it is just as well—change your dress, Elsie."