"Bobby!" Mr. Van Antwerp's wife faced him indignantly. "You wouldn't have her—run away from all this? You wouldn't have her frightened by anything those people can threaten?" Eleanor Van Antwerp's dark eyes sparkled, she held her head proudly. Her husband looked at her half in doubt, half in admiration.
"You would face it?"
"Yes, if it cost me my life."
The look of admiration on Bobby's face brightened and then faded to despondency. "Ah, well, you are right—theoretically, of course, but—would Elizabeth, do you think, have the same courage? Or, if she had, could you, knowing what you do, take the responsibility of allowing her to face it?"
This was the doubt—the horrible doubt, which troubled Mrs. Bobby as she drove to Elizabeth's home, and at the thought of it her heart failed her. Her husband had judged her rightly—she could be braver for herself than for others. Would it not be better, after all, to suggest to the Misses Van Vorst the desirability of a trip abroad? She looked thoughtfully out of the carriage window. It was a bleak February day, and people in the street had their coat-collars turned up against the chill east wind. The climate of New York at this time is detestable; a change would do any one good. She would go herself to the Riviera and take Elizabeth with her.
Mrs. Bobby had hardly reached this conclusion before the carriage stopped in front of the quiet apartment house in Irving Place where the Van Vorsts were spending the winter. It was an old-fashioned house with an air of sober respectability, that seemed to make such wild thoughts as filled Mrs. Bobby's brain peculiarly strained and improbable, like the hallucinations of a fevered brain. It was a shock, keyed up as she was to the tragic point, to enter the peaceful little drawing-room with its bright coal fire and general air of comfort, and to find Elizabeth prosaically engaged in looking over visiting-cards and invitations. And yet Mrs. Bobby was shocked by the change in her appearance, which every day made more apparent. Her face was haggard, there was a deep purple flush in her cheeks; her lips were dry and feverish, there was an odd, strained look in her eyes. The hand she held out to her visitor burned like fire.
"I'm so glad you came in," she said, with a wan smile. "I've been looking over these stupid things and my head aches. You see, I've neglected my social duties shamefully—not sending cards, or even, I'm afraid, answering some of my invitations. People must think me horribly rude."
"Oh, they know you've been ill," Mrs. Bobby answered vaguely. She sat down, all the wind taken out of her sails, and stared wonderingly at Elizabeth. How could she—how could she look over visiting-cards and talk about invitations, with this terrible danger hanging over her head? Was it possible that she had no suspicions? And yet—did not her eyes betray her? But Mrs. Bobby could not think of any way of introducing the subject of which her mind and heart were full, and there was silence till Elizabeth spoke again.
"It's odd, isn't it," she said languidly, "that Mrs. Lansdowne hasn't asked me to her ball. Have you cards for it?"
"I—I believe so."