It was Mrs.Bareaud and the old doctor, and they closed the door again, softly, and came in to the others.

They had left Crailey alone with Fanchon and Tom Vanrevel, the two who loved him best.
The warm day beyond the windows became like Sunday, no voices sounded from without in the noon hush, though sometimes a little group of people would gather across the street to eye the house curiously and nod and whisper.

The strong, blue shadows of the veranda pillars stole slowly across the white floor of the porch in a lessening slant, and finally lay all in a line, as the tall clock in a corner of the library asthmatically coughed the hour of noon.

In this jarring discordance there was something frightful to Miss Betty.

She rose abruptly, and, imperiously waving back Mrs.Tanberry, who would have detained her--for there was in her face and manner the incipient wildness of control overstrained to the breaking-point--she went hurriedly out of the room and out of the house, to the old bench in the garden.