As Mary Louise entered her home after delivering the bonnet she was met in the hall by Aunt Sally, the fat old negro cook who had been with the Hathaway family off and on since the Civil war and, before that time, had been with them only on and never off, for as a small child she had belonged to the Colonel’s father. She, with the aid of Uncle Eben, her husband, did most of the work of the great house, not because Colonel Hathaway was not willing to hire any number of servants, but because the two old ex-slaves preferred to do the work according to their own ideas. There was supposed to be a housemaid, but no matter how efficient and satisfactory this maid might prove to Mary Louise, she never met the requirements of Aunt Sally and consequently there was a procession of housemaids coming and going. Aunt Sally and Uncle Eben couldn’t and wouldn’t leave and so the housemaids must. Aunt Sally was goodness itself where white people were concerned, but she was as hard as steel in regard to her own race. Even Uncle Eben came in for her criticism, though she never let anyone else say anything derogatory to her faithful mate.

“Eben air as good as nigger men goes,” she would assert. “He ain’t ter say puffect, but I reckon he air doin’ er his bes’ ’cordin’ ter his ’telligence.”

Aunt Sally met Mary Louise as she opened the front door and it was plain to see that something had happened. The old woman had been weeping and, as the young mistress entered she gave a final dab to her eyes with the corner of her apron.

“Why Aunt Sally, what’s the matter?”

“Lawd, honey chil’, they’s trouble a comin’! Trouble a comin’! I knowed it when yo’ maw’s pixcher fell off’n the wall las’ month—I knowed it when I dreamed ’bout nesses full er aigs an’ none er them cracked even, which air a sho sign trouble air hatchin’ an—”

“But, Aunt Sally, please tell me what the trouble is,” begged Mary Louise.

“I cyarn’t bear ter tell you, honey baby. Me’n Eben an’ Marse Jim air been all time tryin’ ter keep trouble ’way from you an’ now I cyarn’t be the one ter tell it to you. Marse Jim air sho the one what am a bringin’ it on you an’ I’ll say it to his face right now an’ I’d a said it to his face befo’ the wah, even if he had a sol’ me down the river the nex’ minute for my imperence. He mought sen’ me a packin’ now, but, befo’ Gawd, I’m a gonter tell it to him.”

“Tell him what? Please speak out, Aunt Sally!”

“Tell him he ain’t called on ter do no sich confabbin’ as he done did.”

“Confabulating with whom? Mr. Danny hasn’t been home, has he? It isn’t quite time for him.”

“Yes, he done a been an’ he gone agin.”

“Gone! Gone where?”

“I ain’t sho wha’ he gone but, arfter sech a bullyraggin’ as Marse Jim done give him, I reckon there wa’n’t nothin fer him ter do but light out.”

“Oh, Aunt Sally! Aunt Sally! What am I to do?”

“Lawd love you, honey baby, yo’ ol’ Aunt Sally ain’t got no ’vice ter han’ yer. I reckon’ you’ll have ter take it to the Lawd in prayer.”

“What did Grandpa Jim say?” asked Mary Louise, trying to keep back the tears that were forcing their way down her pale cheeks.

Aunt Sally was crying now.

“Oh, honey, I cyarn’t say sech things, even in vain repetition! He done ’lowed that po’ Mr. Danny wa’ a fortune hunter an’ a dead beat comed from a fambly er law breakers an’ he done come an’ stole yo’ love an’ tromple it in the dus’. Now, he said, he wa’ neglectin’ er you mos’ shameful. He ’cused him er bein’ the cause er yo’ pale face an’ sad eyes.”

“What did poor Danny say?” sobbed Mary Louise.

“He done arsk with a moughty stiff back bone: ‘Air my wife make complaint er me?’ an’ I wa’ so ’stonished I couldn’t b’lieve my years when Marse Jim up’n tol’ as big a lie as the debble hisse’f could er fabricated. ‘Yes,’ he say, ‘yes, time an’ time ergin.’ I knowed it wa’n’t the truth an’ I come moughty nigh bustin’ in an’ a sayin’ so but I wa’ a mixin’ up a sponge cake at the time an’ you know, honey chil’, how ’ticular I air ’bout keepin’ a stirrin’ when oncet I gits a goin’ on sponge cake?”

“Yes, I know,” Mary Louise nodded, sadly. “But, oh, Aunt Sally, I do wish you had stopped this one time.”

“Well, p’raps I should er, but habit’s habit. Not only air I got that there habit ’bout sponge cake but I also boast the habit er not wedgin’ in on other folks’s business, mos’ specially white folks’s. They wa’ in the dinin’ room at the time where Mr. Danny done come ter try an’ git you on the phome at that there Humpty Dumpty Shop. He comed back an’ arsked me whar’ you is an’ when I tol’ him, he pick up the phome and, while he wa’ a tryin’ ter git you, Marse Jim comed in. You had done gone from the Humpty Dumpty Shop but he got ter chattin’ a piece with one er yo’ gal friends, Miss Josie, mo’n lakly. I heard him say, ‘Well don’t let Mary Louise find out about it,’ kinder laughin’ lak, an’ jes then Marse Jim comed in an’ he yanked the phome out’n his han’. I seed him do it from the crack in the pantry do’ what Mr. Danny done lef’ open a bit the way men folks has a way er doin’, black an’ white.

“‘Whe’fo’ you use the phome in my house fer sech a vile nufarious comversation!’ he hollered out an’ Mr. Danny jes’ stepped back an’ said real quiet lak, ‘Colonel Hathaway, you are mistaken. You must have misunderstood me. I merely said—’

“‘Never min’ what you said! I heard what you said’ an’ then he started in tellin’ him mo’ things than you could er believed pos’ble. When he done tol’ him you’d made complaint er him time an’ time ergin, it looked lak Mr. Danny jes’ give up. Befo’ then he’d kinder jawed back but mos’ ’spectful lak cawnsiderin’ the way Marse Jim wa’ a ladlin’ it out ter him.”

“What did he do then? Did he tell you where he was going and when he’d be back?” asked Mary Louise breathlessly.

“No, baby, he jes’ bulged through the do’ inter the hall an’ I hearn him a goin’ licksplittin’ up the step inter you-all’s room an’ then, in ’bout ten minutes, I hearn the front do’ bang an’ that’s all ’cept’n that ol’ fool Eben said he seed him gittin’ on a down town cyar an’ he wa’ a carryin’ somethin’.”

Mary Louise closed her eyes for a moment and steadied herself against a hall chair, then trying to compose her trembling and convulsed countenance, she made her way slowly up stairs. She wanted to run but her feet seemed to have leaden weights on them and it was with difficulty that she advanced step by step clinging to the bannister as to a life rope.

Slowly she opened the door to her pretty room, the room that Grandpa Jim had taken such delight in having all freshly done over for her while she was on her wedding trip and to which she had come home so happily and joyously. It was a pink room, a soft shell-pink, and Mary Louise had said that she felt as though she were living in the heart of a rose. The woodwork and the furniture were old ivory. The pictures were all the daintiest imaginable water colors and pastels. The hangings were of cretonne with a design of roses in loose clusters. The floor was covered with quaint rag rugs woven of pastel shades. It was a charming room and seemed like a bit of fairy land where one might dream one’s life away.

The girl stood for a moment on the threshold gazing into the room. It looked strangely unfamiliar to her, as though it might have been the room of some other person. Perhaps it was Mary Louise’s room and she was not Mary Louise. She crossed to the dressing table. Such a lovely dressing table with dainty appurtenances that might have been fit for a princess had there been any princesses left to speak of at that time! She picked up the silver backed brush, Danny’s present to that person called Mary Louise, the gay, happy girl who used to occupy that room—used to look in that clear mirror and brush her hair, such pretty curly hair, every strand of which Danny said he loved.

She glanced at her image in the mirror and started back in terror. It wasn’t Mary Louise after all—not this person whose tragic red-rimmed eyes gazed into hers. Those blanched tear-stained cheeks could never have been the cheeks of Mary Louise. Her cheeks were soft and rosy. That trembling chin with its sagging, convulsed muscles could not be the round determined little chin that Danny used to stoop over and kiss while her hair was being brushed. Whose mouth was that, that pale gash in a paler face? Mary Louise’s mouth was a cupid’s bow and crimson and full of smiles with a row of pearly teeth. She widened her mouth in a piteous grin. The teeth were pearly but they too seemed to have lost their sparkle. She picked up the folded piece of paper stuck on the plump pink pin-cushion with a long hat-pin. The pin had been thrust all the way through the cushion, the point sticking out on the other side.

“Josie would say that showed his state of mind,” flashed through Mary Louise’s thoughts. It seemed to her that the point that had so fiercely penetrated the fat little cushion had pierced her own heart.

She had known all the time she would find a note stuck on her pin-cushion, had known it from the moment Aunt Sally had told her Uncle Eben had seen Danny get on a trolley car and that he was carrying something. She knew that something was a suit-case. Uncle Eben knew it too and Aunt Sally knew it, but she wouldn’t tell her young mistress for fear of hurting her more.

The girl smoothed out the note which had been hastily folded. She had to wipe her eyes many times before she could decipher the penciled scrawl which gave evidence even more clearly than the hat-pin of Danny’s state of mind. It was a boyish little letter but with a tragic note running through it that almost broke Mary Louise’s heart. His great and abiding love for her was expressed in every word but, at the same time, his deep humiliation and anger at the treatment to which he had been forced to submit at the hands of Colonel Hathaway were evident. He told her he had been driven from the house by her grandfather and must, of course, leave. He did not know wherein he had sinned, but he felt sure he must have done something unpardonable, even if unwittingly, to make his dear wife complain of him as Colonel Hathaway had assured him had been the case. If any one else had told him such a thing, he would not have believed him but, in spite of Colonel Hathaway’s treatment of him, he could not doubt his word, knowing him to be honorable above everything and truthful—as truthful as his own Mary Louise to whom a lie was impossible. He was going away—it was best for all concerned—but it would not be so very long. Perhaps Colonel Hathaway would get over the rancor he now felt—perhaps it could be in some way explained to him that he had been mistaken. At any rate, he felt that Mary Louise’s grandfather had the prior claim on her and he would let the old gentleman’s declining years be as happy as possible. He could never enter the house again unless Colonel Hathaway apologized to him and offered some explanation of the astounding sins of which he had accused him. If she had not been so sure of her grandfather’s sanity, he would believe that Colonel Hathaway was not himself but, when he had suggested this to her, she had been so grieved, so sure it was not the case, he had felt she must know and he had given up that idea which might have explained everything. He only asked his dear little wife to trust him and love him, if only a little, and to let him know in what way he had sinned against her to cause her to complain of him. If she had only told him and not told some one else, even anyone as close and dear as her grandfather! He did not blame her though. He loved her so supremely and trusted her so implicitly that he knew she could do no wrong.

At this point in the letter Mary Louise felt she could bear life no longer.

“It is my own fault! My own fault!” she wailed. “I have not been truthful. I have done the worst thing a person can do—I have lied to myself. I have known all the time that Grandpa Jim was not himself and I have refused to admit it. I have wronged him and I have wronged Danny. Now I will suffer all my life for having been so blind, so blind because I would not see.”

She composed herself and went on with the letter. Danny was going away—going far away, and to be gone for several months. His firm had been talking to him about going to China to establish an agency there and he had, up to this time, refused, feeling he could not part from Mary Louise, nor could he ask her to leave her grandfather and go with him. Now, it seemed wiser for him to go. There was a big advancement in it and he would prosper financially by the change. Colonel Hathaway had spoken of him as being such a dead beat, which was hard in that he had wanted from the beginning to do what he could in the matter of paying board for himself and his wife, but the proposition had been laughed at by Colonel Hathaway as absurd considering his own wealth. Now of course, he realized his mistake in letting the matter drop, although, at the time, if he had insisted upon paying board, he would have been guilty of very bad taste. He was taking the train for Chicago that very evening where he would see the president of the company and then would go on to San Francisco, from there to sail for China. He gave her an address in San Francisco and hoped to find a letter awaiting him there. That was all.