"What do I care for his beautiful letters? What did you want to drag me into this mess for? Now I shall have to do something."
"Oh, no, no, Mrs. Harbinger!" cried May, clasping her hands. "Don't do anything. You won't have to do anything. I had to tell you when he is coming here."
Mrs. Harbinger stared at the girl with the mien of one who is convinced that somebody's wits are hopelessly gone, and is uncertain whether they are those of herself or of her friend.
"Coming here?" she repeated helplessly. "When?"
"This afternoon. I am really going to meet him!" May ran on, flashing instantly from depression into smiles and animation. "Oh, I am so excited!"
Mrs. Harbinger seized the girl again by the shoulder, and this time with an indignation evidently personal as well as moral.
"Have you dared to ask a strange man to meet you at my house, May Calthorpe?"
The other cringed, and writhed her shoulder out of the clutch of her hostess.
"Of course not," she responded, taking in her turn with instant readiness the tone of just resentment. "He wrote me that he would be here."
The other regarded May in silence a moment, apparently studying her in the light of these new revelations of character. Then she turned and walked thoughtfully to a chair, leaving May to sit down again on the sofa by which they had been standing. Mrs. Harbinger was evidently going over in her mind the list of possible authors who might be at her afternoon tea that day.