A broad beam of light fell across the dark, wainscoted room, and in the track of it sat a handsome well-dressed man, busily eating. In front of him was a roast chicken, a cut-glass dish of celery and a ruby mound of jelly; a crusty loaf of new bread lay broken at his right; at his left, winking in the sunbeam, stood a decanter half filled with a topaz liquor. He was daintily poising a bit of jelly on some bread, the mouthful was in the air, when his eyes fell on Caroline, an amazed and cobwebbed statue in front of him.
The hand that held the bread grew rigid. As spilled milk spreads over a table, the man's face was flooded with sudden grayish white; against it his thin lips were marked in lavender. While the grandfather clock ticked ten times they stared at each other, and then a wave of deep red poured over his face and his mouth twitched.
"What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly, pointedly regarding her dusty rumpled figure.
Caroline gulped and dropped her eyes.
"I—I—nothing particular," she murmured guiltily.
The man laid the piece of bread down carefully and wiped his fingers on the napkin spread across his knees.
"Some time," he said, in a leisurely drawl, "you'll burst into a room like that, where a person with a weak heart may be sitting, and that'll be the last of 'em."
