Out of her sphere - University Library

A COOL RECEPTION. 77
spoil, and nothing to preserve, with all its
litter of books and flowers, work and
drawing, and the hundred things to show
that if Millj w^as not there at the present
time, she had only recently vacated the
apartment, he could have begun his story,
and gone on with it so much better ; but
how was he to begin it, and how was he
to go on, with Mrs. Eushington sitting-
there in awful state, looking at him as if
she expected him to go within a quarter of
an hour, and was rather wondering why he
had come at all ?
But at last he got into his story. It
had to be told, and he was not going away
without telling it, and Mrs. Kushington
heard him—if one might say such a thing
of her— grimly ; her face growing colder,
harder, more mask-like with every word.
"When he had said all he had to say, he
looked anxiously to her. '' She might help
me now," he thought, ^' it's too bad not