Since Blake would not be on the premises that night, Rosamond asked herself whether she ought not to go to Mrs. Lee’s and engage Bella Greenup to stay the night at Villa Rose. She had never spent a night alone in the large house and questioned whether she cared to do so. In the end she dismissed the idea of a companion; for, as she reminded herself, the community had never had a burglar or even a burglar scare, and, while an occasional tramp might stray to the Trenton road, none had been known to climb the hill into the sacred precincts of Roseborough.

Like the toll-man, she was unaware that nearly an hour had slipped by in the combined delay of the Judge’s call and Florence’s manoeuvres. Still under the impression that the afternoon was hers to spend by the river, she went into the house for more hair pins to catch up the curls, shaken loose by laughter and the mignonette’s fingers. She satisfied herself that the Orleans mirror reflected a vision both fair and neat enough to entrance Love at sight, if he should come riding by where the rushes divided and made a peephole to the slough. Then she ran downstairs again, but her gay song ceased in the shock of hearing four o’clock ring out—a shock by no means modified when she asked the kitchen clock for denial and saw the long hand at eleven minutes past the hour.

“Four o’clock! If Amanda were here she would be bringing me tea to the summer-house. It seems very late to go to the river; because, of course, I must have my supper at five-thirty as usual. Oh, dear! I ought to have it at five to-night; because they will all be here by seven, and I shall take so much longer than His Friggets would to get my own supper and wash up, and then set out all the things for them on the dining-room table.... And, of course, if I don’t have my tea now, I shall be hungry before five-thirty. Oh, dear! It would seem that His Friggets have their uses in my life, after all.”

Another wave of indignation swept over her, to cool in despair, as she realized how her Wonderful Day had vanished, hour by hour, leaving her only the distressful discovery that colours were not going to free her. From now on she would risk a proposal from some tiresome man every time she stepped abroad, alone. As for the women...! she trembled to think of the gossip that might gush forth as soon as they saw her. Tittle-tattle and unwelcome proposals! Were these to be her lot until, in desperation, she allowed herself to be persuaded by one or other of Roseborough’s gentlemen? Angry, helpless tears filled her eyes.

“If I were smothered in crape I could go anywhere alone, and do whatever I wanted to, without stupid, silly men intruding. I didn’t know when I was well off,” she whimpered. “I’ve never once got outside the gates of Villa Rose all this day!”

Barely one hour left! What should she do with it?

The question as to this hour, as with all the previous hours, was settled for her by Roseborough. A sound of wheels on the road ceased at her carriage-gate. In a trice, she saw the gate unlatched and borne inward by a short, stout woman in a white mull dress, and a white hat covered with a green mosquito-netting veil, which served to keep the dust from her broad, pink countenance. She wore also a very wide tartan sash with a large bunchy bow at the back, the worse for being much and heavily sat upon.

“Whatever on earth are The Kilties coming here for?” Rosamond asked herself with another rush of anger. “Isn’t this just too awful?” She stamped her foot in vexation.

She did not need to see the cart come through to know that all three of the Misses MacMillan were about to honour her with a visit. Wherever one MacMillan went, all MacMillans went. While Miss Elspeth held the gate open, a broken-kneed gray nag wobbled into the grounds, drawing a loose-wheeled, scratched cart, with one seat that could comfortably hold two, but always squeaked protestingly under three. Two more short, stubby, green-netted, white-frocked maids crowned the cart; both, like their eldest sister, displayed the MacMillan plaid.

To Rosamond’s dismay, their cart was followed by a four-wheeler laden with furbelows. The spinsters of Roseborough always wore white fluffy frocks with bright ribbon sashes, in the summer, because they were “so young-looking” (the frocks, not the spinsters). The four-wheeler held two seats, one stool, and seven girls. Only two could sit on each narrow seat; but there was a stool wedged in between the seats and one sat on that, holding the sixth girl on her lap. The seventh stood partly on her own and partly on the fifth girl’s feet, and held on with all her might to the back of the front seat to keep from toppling into the road. When the vehicle stopped and they all tried to get out, the whole looked more like a wrecked ice-cream cart than anything else, with the white flounces spilling and tumbling over the edge in every direction. These were the Misses Pelham-Hew.

Dr. Wells, Roseborough’s highly trusted physician—a doctor of the old school and a man who loved his joke (no matter who else loved it not)—was fond of saying that the difference between Jacob Pelham-Hew and his namesake in the Old Testament was that Jacob of the Bible waited seven years for one damsel whereas Jacob Pelham-Hew had seven damsels waiting for one man—a witticism considered very funny by everyone in Roseborough but the Pelham-Hews.

In the wake of the ice-cream cart came a scrawny sorrel, drawing a sulky. Miss Graham sat in the one bowl-shaped seat, very erect and mannish in demeanour with a tan coat over her white duck dress and sporting a “choker” with a gold horseshoe pin. Miss Imogen Graham let it be known that she was well able to take care of herself and despised men; indeed, she would not look at one, save to be courteous. That courtesy was the keystone of her character was at once made evident if there was a man in the room, for he never lacked her company.

Miss Palametta Watts and her mother in their phaeton brought up the rear. Miss Palametta was small—“a lean, simpering wisp of a thing,” Mrs. Witherby called her. She possessed two brown eyes, with fairly good possibilities in the line of flirtation, and a bang of curly, brown hair that had received its first baptism of walnut tea—what is called “touching up”—just above the ears and at the long ends. Miss Palametta was arch. Some one had once told her that there was something birdlike in the little tosses and dartings of her head on her long throat, with the unfortunate result that her head was now never still a moment and she twittered incessantly. Her mother, who was very fat and nearly stone deaf, accompanied her everywhere; for, as Miss Palametta said, she would not for worlds be classed with forward, modern women who showed themselves in public, unchaperoned. Under cover of her mother’s deafness, the modest creature had practically proposed to every eligible man in Roseborough; and had so compromised one poor fellow that he fled to Trenton, and became a bank clerk, to escape the condemnation Roseborough heaped on any man who went so far and then refused his destiny.

Rosamond’s surprise had turned to alarm by the time the Watts’ chariot hove in sight.

“I’m not at home,” she muttered, blankly. “I am not at home.”

What could be the cause of this white-starched avalanche descending upon her out of four creaking rigs? She was not left long in doubt.

“We’ve come to hear all about the new man!” they chorused, in running up the steps to her. “Mrs. Witherby says a new man is coming to Roseborough and you know all about him.”

“I—er—I—I don’t know anything about him,” she stammered to the eager, glittered-eyed ones, cramming her in on every side. “Oh, yes, you do! You’ve been told everything,” Elspeth MacMillan shrilled in her ear from behind.

“His name is Jack Falcon and he used to go to Charleroy,” her sister, Jeanie Deans MacMillan, supplemented from in front. “Mrs. Witherby says so.”

“You needn’t tell me anything about him,” said Imogen Graham, in her deep voice, and giving her mannish choker a tug. “I despise men—in fact nothing—nothing—disgusts me like a man!” Any one of the group might have completed the sentence for her; they had all heard it so often.

“He’s done something famous,” Flora Macdonald MacMillan shrieked.

“He’s made a lot of money,” Anabeth Pelham-Hew called, pushing her head into Rosamond’s ken under Imogen Graham’s elbow. Anabeth was short, and Dr. Wells said her hair had grown thin on the top from scraping against her taller sisters’ angles in order to thrust herself into notice.

“A lot of money,” Anabel, her twin, echoed.

“A lot—a lot of money!” Justinia Pelham-Hew stuttered.

“Oh, yes! he’s made a lot of money.” Constanza Pelham-Hew came in with the longer repetition—the whole line—exactly as if the thing were a glee and she were concluding the first round. “Oh! isn’t it interesting?” Maravene Pelham-Hew trebled, taking up the second verse.

“Yes! isn’t it interesting?”

“Oh! so interesting!”

Claribel and Berthalin Pelham-Hew generally expressed their view in duet form.

“But I don’t know anything about Mr. Falcon. I really don’t. He’s a friend of Mrs. Lee’s—I mean he was a pupil of the Professor’s—years ago. He—he....” Rosamond stammered on, innocent that she was arousing the worst suspicions in the breast of the one silent maiden in the group, the chaperoned Palametta. “He—er—is coming home to-morrow—from Europe.”

“Europe?”

“Europe?”

“Europe?” the MacMillans.

“For my part,” Miss Graham boomed, “if you don’t stop talking about that man I shall go home. Nothing,” said she, putting her arms akimbo and nudging into the verandah rail—“Nothing disgusts me like a man!”

“I’d be so glad to—to—er—offer you tea,” Rosamond said hastily, glad of a chance to change this embarrassing conversation, “only Amanda and Jemima are away for the day; and I’ve—er been out to tea myself—and—er—the fire’s out. But I hope you’ve all had your tea.” “Mrs. Witherby wouldn’t tell us a thing about the man.”

“No! she didn’t tell us, either.”

“No! she thinks, if he has money, she’ll get him for Corinne or her precious niece.”

“We tried to get Mabel Crewe to come with us, but she said she didn’t care whether the man came to Roseborough, or not!”

“I’ve always claimed that Mabel Crewe is insincere.

“It will be so nice to have another man at parties.”

“Did you hear how much money he has?” a Pelham-Hew queried. At the word “money” the chatter ceased; they all drew up at attention.

“I—that is—Mrs. Lee didn’t say anything about money. No, really, she didn’t.” Rosamond felt as cruel as if she had wantonly run her hat pin into seven palpitating Pelham-Hew hearts. Income was so pinched and painful a strain in their home.

“Noth—ing—about—mon—ey?”

“You’re either mistaken or you are amusing yourself at our expense, Mrs. Mearely!” A MacMillan’s nerves were snapping and her voice was so sharp that it stung.

“Mrs. Witherby said positively he’d made a great success.”

“Positively!”

“Grea-at success!” “Yes—yes, Mrs. Lee said something of success,” Rosamond admitted, “but I—er—gathered that it was an artistic success.”

“Ugh! the brute!” Miss Graham snarled. The others looked blank.

One cold titter broke the silence. It emerged from Palametta’s thin lips. Everyone looked at her. They knew that titter of Palametta’s.

“Why—of course,” said Palametta as if she had discerned what should have been obvious to every one. “Why—of—course.” She drawled it.

“Of course what?” Rosamond, the sometimes blunt, demanded.

“I’ve been noticing your gown and wondering why you won’t tell us anything really about Mr. Falcon,” she twittered archly, darting her head from side to side; but there was rather more of the snake than of the bird in her, as she did it.

“Miss Watts, what on earth do you mean?”

“Why, yes!” a MacMillan shrilled. “She’s in colours!”

“Mrs. Mearely’s in colours,” the Pelham-Hew septet sounded the tocsin.

Rosamond’s face blazed.

“There’s no change in my dress,” she asserted violently, “except that there are no black ribbons. I’ve often worn white—with flowers—in the evening. Why, the colour of this dress is”—she caught Palametta’s glittering gaze, then a Pelham-Hew’s appraising eye, and, realizing that this feline bevy was not composed of the colour-blind, finished weakly—“well—it’s a sort of lavender.”

Miss Palametta tittered coldly.

“It’s a sort that never grew in a border of fragrant remembrance round a last resting-place,” the eldest and Scotchest of the MacMillans bur-r-red at her, sternly.

Anabeth Pelham-Hew’s eyes filled with tears; not only did her lip tremble, but her chin wagged, with the volume and velocity of the fear that seized her.

“You—you—you’ve had one husband, you—you greedy thing!” She flung herself on Anabel’s breast and cried hysterically.

“Well! I never!” Rosamond exclaimed hotly.

“Anabeth is su-subject to hys-s-teria,” Justinia explained, as if all Roseborough did not know it. Roseborough held pronounced views regarding Anabeth’s hysteria; views which coincided with Blake’s on the cavorting of Eve and the remedy for it.

Never since she had come to reside in Villa Rose as milady, had a Roseborough spinster shown Mrs. Mearely anything but an almost sycophantic homage. But never until to-day had Mrs. Mearely clashed with a Roseborough spinster’s hopes. Words and breath left her as she saw herself—so recently an object of adulation—confronted with one dozen enemies.

“For my part, I’d be astounded if there were anything in this,” Miss Graham averred, with another tug at her choker; “because I can’t see how a widow could be induced to hang herself a second time. Nothing—nothing disgusts me like....”

“It’s a great shock to all of us to see you in colours again,” Flora Macdonald MacMillan broke in. “In all your days of mourning, no other hearts have beaten in such unison with yours as ours. We, the girls of Roseborough, have felt almost as if we were widows with you.”

“Yes,” her sister, Jeanie Deans, chimed in, “the girls of Roseborough loved to think of you as so beautiful and so sad, and forever alone.”

“Oh, yes! forever alone!” Elspeth concurred emphatically.

“We girls have often talked about it,” Maravene informed her; “we just love to picture you like a mourning dove....”

“A fading rose is what I always say, Maravene. I think it’s more appropriate, besides sweeter,” Constanza interrupted.

“I know you do, sister; but I like the mourning dove idea better. It’s lonesomer.”

Rosamond emitted an indignant sound nearly related to a snort. “Stuff and nonsense! If that is the silly way you think about me, you can just give it up right now. It is time for me to put on ordinary colours and I intend to wear them—just as other people do. I am not in the least eager to meet Mr. Falcon, except for my dear Mrs. Lee’s sake. You can have him, for all I care and—and tear him to bits among you! I forgot to tell you that he is quite an old man—with a gray beard—and a bald head.”

“Oh—h! No—o!”

“Naturally—what I expected,” Miss Graham began. “Nothing—nothing....” She paused a fraction of a second to give her choker the usual masculine tug, and Berthalin and Claribel burst in with:

“Old?—gray?—bald?—who says so?”

“Mrs. Lee says so.”

“And she hasn’t seen him for nearly twenty years,” Palametta ruminated. “Oh, come now, Mrs. Mearely! Why can’t you be as frank about your interest in the newcomer as we are? Tell us his real age,” she tittered icily.

Rosamond’s bosom swelled and her hands clenched as the flame of anger scorched her. It burned the more fiercely because she was, for the moment, wholly at the mercy of the spinsterial dozen. She could not force them to believe her: nay, it would appear that the only way to change the “girls” of Roseborough from foes into friends again was to return to the raiment of Niobe.

“I am sorry, but I must ask you to excuse me.” She tried to say it with the dignity of the Mearely name and Villa Rose behind her; “Mrs. Witherby and the Wellses and Mrs. Lee are coming in for cards this evening. And I must prepare for them. Amanda and Jemima are away for the day, and I have everything to do.”

“Shall you wear colours at Mrs. Lee’s breakfast to-morrow?” a MacMillan demanded.

“Yes! That is what we all want to know,” a Pelham-Hew added.

As usual Rosamond’s sense of humour overcame her anger.

“I will compromise the matter if you will only run away now, like good girls,” she answered, laughing a little in spite of herself. “I will wear white—no ribbons. So put on your fanciest sashes and catch the poor old chap fast in the bow knots.”

“Oh! Mrs. Mearely!” Elspeth MacMillan ejaculated, catching the infection of Rosamond’s mirth, and smiling. “Of course—we only meant—we think it would be so nice to have another man at parties.”

“So that we won’t always have to dance together all our lives,” the Pelham-Hews choired.

“Make a circle around him and pin your sash ends to him as if he were a maypole; then, at the signal, all run in different directions and see which gets him—or the biggest piece of him.”

“Oh! Mrs. Mearely!” every one but Palametta (and, of course, her deaf mother) exclaimed at once. Rosamond’s bold speech had made them feel slightly absurd; they thought it best to laugh it off and make a joke of the whole affair.

“Anabeth is su-subject to hys-s-teria so that wh-hen she makes a je-jest she always c-cries,” Justinia elucidated tactfully.

“Yes,” Constanza amended, “we are not really all trying to catch a man we’ve never seen.”

“And may not like when we have seen him!” Claribel concluded.

“Come on, girls,” Imogen boomed. “Mrs. Mearely wants to get rid of us. Let’s go down to Dollop’s. I’ll stand treat for one ginger syrup all around.”

“Oh, goody!” “Oh, come on!” “Hooray!” “Imogen’s going to treat.” Her offer was greeted with the shouts of joy that generally follow on a treat, especially in communities like Roseborough. The seven Pelham-Hews, who never had pennies to spend in Dollop’s, rushed, giggling, down the steps and scrambled over one another into their rig for all the world like a pan of dough “raising.” The MacMillans followed as fast as was consistent with the dignity of the clan’s tartan. Palametta made a point of lingering to offer a limp handshake and, as her fingers slipped away and her head tossed and perked, she tittered faintly.

“If she te-he-hes like that at me again I’ll box her ears,” Rosamond vowed inwardly. An inspiration came to her, from the springs of her naturally impulsive generosity, which went far to restore her to her former position in the hearts of Roseborough’s spinsters.

“Wait, wait,” she called. “I’ll give you some bottles of Amanda’s parsnip wine. That will be better than Dollop’s syrup. And a basket full of glasses and some ginger cookies, and you can picnic down by the tower in that little nook of the slough.”

Not delaying for more than the first “hooray,” she caught up her flower basket from the porch and ran into the kitchen. To fill the basket with glasses, cookies, and the three quart bottles was the work of only a few minutes. She confided the precious cargo to the MacMillans and smilingly waved off her now friendly guests, who departed amid subdued and genteel cheering. Imogen even baritoned the first line of “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” (substituting “she” of course); but the Pelham-Hews, turning crimson in an agony of hurt refinement, begged her to desist. The gate clicked behind the spinsterical cortÈge; and five o’clock rang from the tower.

Rosamond went indoors and set out the plates for her supper.

By the slough, where the spinsters of Roseborough picnicked, the reeds and rushes were now silent and still, save where the light breeze passed; though there was a trail of freshly crushed and broken ones, where something heavier than the breeze had made its way through. One individual besides the toll-man saw the black-suited, black-whiskered stranger that afternoon. Johnson, the butcher’s boy, encountered him in a lane almost directly behind the two neighbouring cottages where lived Mr. Horace Ruggle and Miss Jenny’s mother, Mrs. Hackensee. Mrs. Hackensee occupied the front of her cottage and rented the two back rooms, overlooking the river, to Dr. Frei, the young musician who had come to Roseborough within the last few weeks. “Dr. Frei, Violin Instructor” said the written placard on his door.

Johnson nursed an intense dislike for aliens; he “suspected ’em of plottin’ agin the guver-mint.” Dr. Frei was an alien, and Johnson told Mrs. Witherby’s day maid, Hannah Ann, that he suspected the black-whiskered man of being in a plot with Dr. Frei to blow up the Roseborough gaol or the bell tower “or sump’n”; because, when he turned about at the end of the lane for a second look, the stranger had disappeared! After he had left her, Hannah Ann was in a seriously overwrought condition; and so Mrs. Witherby found her when she returned from her drive. Such was Mrs. Witherby’s own temperament, that it was not long before mistress and maid were in the same state of mind. Indeed, Mrs. Witherby was obliged to forego her customary glass of stout at dinner, because Hannah Ann refused to descend alone to the cellar for it and Mrs. Witherby would not allow her daughter Corinne to accompany her. Mabel Crewe, her niece, was not afraid, but she had turned sulky and bitter under her aunt’s jibes on Wilton Howard’s account. She revenged herself, therefore, by mocking at Mrs. Witherby’s fears and by making her go without her ale.