She rather hoped, after the thermometer was removed, that the young lady would ask her some question about Venice and her present destination; but, though so amiable and so grateful, she did not seem to feel any curiosity about the good Samaritan who thus succoured her.
Althea found her patient less feverish next morning when she went in early to see her, and though she said that her body felt as though it were being beaten with red-hot hammers, she smiled in saying it, and Althea then, administering her dose, asked her what her name might be.
It was Helen Buchanan, she learned.
'And mine is Althea Jakes. You are English, aren't you?'
'Oh no, I'm Scotch,' said Miss Buchanan.
'And I am American. Do you know any Americans?'
'Oh yes, quite a lot. One of them is a Mrs. Harrison, and lives in Chicago,' said Miss Buchanan, who seemed in a more communicative mood. 'I met her in Nice one winter; a very nice, kind woman, who gives most sumptuous parties. Her husband is a millionaire; one never sees him. Do you come from Chicago? Do you know her?'
Althea, with some emphasis, said that she came from Boston.
'Another,' Miss Buchanan pursued, 'lives in New York, though she is usually over here; she is immensely rich, too. She hunts every winter in England, and is great fun and is frightfully well up in everything—pictures, books, music, you know: Americans usually are well up, aren't they? She wants me to stay with her some day in New York; perhaps I shall, if I can manage to afford the voyage. Her name is Bigham; perhaps you know her.'
'No. I know of her, though; she is very well known,' said Althea rather coldly; for Mrs. Bigham was an excessively fashionable and reputedly reckless lady who had divorced one husband and married another, and whose doings filled more scrupulous circles with indignation and unwilling interest.