If the reader can supply a better, he is
entreated to do so.
At length, finding the constraint past all bearing, Mrs. Buzza rose
to go.
"You will do it?" whispered her hostess as they shook hands.
She could not trust herself to answer, but nodded and hastily left
the room. At the front door she almost ran against a thin,
mild-faced gentleman. He drew aside with a bow, and avoided the
collision; but she did not notice him.
"I will do it," she kept repeating to herself, "in spite of the poor
girls."
A mist swept before her eyes as she passed down the road.
She staggered a little, with a vague feeling that the world was
ending somehow; but she repeated--
"I will do it. I have been a good wife to him; but it's all over
now--it's all over to-night."
The mild-faced gentleman into whom Mrs. Buzza had so nearly run in
her agitation was Mr. Fogo. A certain air of juvenility sat upon
him, due to a new pair of gloves and the careful polish which Caleb
had coaxed upon his hat and boots. His clothes were brushed, his
carriage was more erect; and the page, who opened the door, must,
after a scrutiny, have pronounced him presentable, for he was
admitted at once.
Undoubtedly the page blundered; but the events of the past hour had
completely muddled the poor boy's wits, and perhaps the sight of
one of his own sex was grateful, coming as it did after so many
agitated females.
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