“I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of use.  A lady needs some one to talk things over with.  I know your mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to business.  I should not come for a mere call at such a time.  I should be glad to be of some service.”

“Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with me, Mr. Sherrett?”

There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the Sylvie of a few weeks ago.  It was no longer a question of little nothings,—­of how she should get people in and how she could get them out,—­of what she should do and say to seem “nice all through,” like Amy Sherrett.  Mr. Sherrett had not come for a “mere call,” as he said; and there was no mere “receiving.”  The llama lace and the gray silk and the small savoir faire could not help her now.  Mrs. Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the last week or two she had rarely left.  All at once, Sylvie found that she must think and speak both for her mother and herself.

Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis.  Her House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in.  She had been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over which she should pass into perfect shelter of content.

“Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble,” said Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett.  “I don’t think she really understands.  She has lived so long with things as they are, that she cannot imagine them different.  I think it is easier with me, because, you know, I haven’t been used to anything such a very long while.”

Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears.

“You see we shall have to do something right off,—­go somewhere; and mother can’t change the least thing.  She can’t spare Sabina, who has heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her anything she wanted.  And the very things, I suppose, don’t belong to us.  How shall we break through and begin again?” Sylvie looked up earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question.  This was what she really wanted to know.

“You will remove, I suppose?” said Mr. Sherrett “If you could hear of a house,—­if you could propose something definite,—­if you and Sabina could begin to pack up,—­how would that be?”