Miss Isobel sighed. Like the rest of the family, she never knew what to expect from this troublesome, adorable, disturbing mystery called Eleanor. She worshiped her with the solicitous, over-anxious care that saw fever in the healthy flush of youth, regarded a sneeze as premonitory of consumption, and waited with dark certitude for the "something dreadful" that instinct told her was ever about to happen to her darling.
"I am afraid your grandmother is terribly upset about your staying out so late," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.
"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.
"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don't believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."
"Don't I!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won't make any difference. I'll go and change my dress."
"No, dear; you must go to her first. She's been sending Hannah down every few minutes to see if you were here."
"Oh, dear! I suppose I'm in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"
"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn't you know your grandmother would be fretted?"
The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel's look of martyred resignation. On the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.
Enid Bartlett might have passed for a pretty woman had her appearance not been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a Botticelli. Since that time she had done queer things to her hair, pursed her lips, and cultivated an expression of chronic yearning.