Again, I so strongly disbelieved that she would grow old I wished to run downstairs to assure her. How could she? She who, the day before, had walked to Pinckney Street from Harvard Square and showing less fatigue than I who had strolled slowly home from Dartmouth Street, a tenth the distance, had taken me to King’s Chapel where for an hour we had admired the shabby gravestones in the burying ground, smirched with the droppings of impartial pigeons. She had looked at her man’s pocket-watch which she carried in her handbag and said, “Oh, we have half an hour before tea. I suggest we take a walk to Trinity and back.” I had lagged behind sometimes, but she pressed on, her ruthless pace diminishing at no time, not even at street crossings. As she often said, she had been a pedestrian long before automobiles had been thought of, and she was not one to give them the right of way. The light on Arlington Street had just turned red and cars were commencing to move along against us, but Miss Pride did not stop. A truck-driver, halted by her formidable approach, leaned from the cab of his monstrous machine and said, with certain awe, “Look at that damned old bird.” The old bird gave vent to one of her rare laughs and said to me, “He’s only envious. The great thing has lost the use of his legs from running that juggernaut. Come along, we must work up an appetite for tea, you know.”

Rejoicing in my success at the Countess’ and in my secure position in this house, I could not fix my attention on my shorthand exercises. I must have been daydreaming for some time when I became aware of voices in the room below me, that is, an unoccupied guest room where, as Miss Pride told me, she was sketching her memoirs. I opened my door and stood in the hall listening. I could hear nothing but an unintelligible murmur and was just returning to my room when a door downstairs was opened and Hopestill’s voice came up to me. “But how peculiar you are about it, Auntie! Why isn’t it possible that I saw her in Chichester?”

“She wasn’t there that summer. But it’s not of the slightest consequence whether her face is familiar to you, Hope. The important thing about Sonie is that she’s contracted to me.”

I could fairly see the girl shrug her shoulders as she replied, “I understand, dear. I shall keep my hands off.”

“You do not become less vulgar. Good-night.”

I slipped back into my room. Lying face downward on my bed, I could hear the eccentric fury of my heart-beat.

THREE

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