of late, when pressing Olivia too hotly, Aunt Cassie, aware of rousing something indefinably perilous in the nature of the younger woman, drew back in alarm.
Rising stiffly, the old lady groaned a little and, moving down the stairs, said, "I must go, Olivia dear," and, turning, "Miss Peavey will go with me."
Miss Peavey would have stayed, because she was enjoying herself, looking down on all those young people, but she had obeyed the commands of Aunt Cassie for too long, and now she rose, complaining faintly, and made ready to leave.
Olivia urged them to stay, and Sabine, looking at the old lady out of green eyes that held a faint glitter of hatred, said abruptly: "I always thought you stayed until the bitter end, Aunt Cassie."
A sigh answered her . . . a sigh filled with implications regarding Aunt Cassie's position as a lonely, ill, bereft, widowed creature for whom life was finished long ago. "I am not young any longer, Sabine," she said. "And I feel that the old ought to give way to the young. There comes a time. . . ."
Sabine gave an unearthly chuckle. "Ah," she said, in her hard voice, "I haven't begun to give up yet. I am still good for years."
"You're not a child any more, Sabine," the old lady said sharply.
"No, certainly I'm not a child any more." And the remark silenced Aunt Cassie, for it struck home at the memory of that wretched scene in which she had been put to rout so skilfully.
There was a great bustle about getting the two old ladies under way, a great search for cloaks and scarfs and impedimenta; but at last they went off, Aunt Cassie saying over her thin, high shoulder, "Will you say good-by to your dear
