On this particular afternoon he was about to close the window and try to work at his sermon when some one knocked at his door.
"Come in," he said impatiently. The maid appeared.
"Please, sir, there's some one would like to speak to you."
"Who is it?"
"She gave her name as Miss Milton, sir."
He paused, looking down at his papers. "She said she wouldn't keep you more than a moment, sir."
"Very well. I'll see her."
Fate pushing him again. Why should this woman come to him? How could any one say that any of the steps that he had taken in this affair had been his fault? Why, he had had nothing whatever to do with them!
The sight of Miss Milton in his doorway filled him with the same vague disgust that he had known on the earlier occasions at the Library. To-day she was wearing a white cotton dress, rather faded and crumpled, and grey silk gloves; in one of the fingers there was a hole. She carried a pink parasol, and wore a large straw hat overtrimmed with roses. Her face with its little red-rimmed eyes, freckled and flushed complexion, her clumsy thick-set figure, fitted ill with her youthful dress.
It was obvious enough that fate had not treated her well since her departure from the Library; she was running to seed very swiftly, and was herself bitterly conscious of the fact.