But bliss in this world is always transient, and at her happiest moment Miss Merrivale looked up to perceive Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson bearing down upon her. Mrs. Sampson was accompanied by the Hon. Tom Greenfield, who both felt and looked utterly out of place; and who was dragged along in the wake of his companion quite as much by his unwillingness to be left to his own devices in a crowd of strangers, as by any particular desire to follow her.
"My dear Frances," the widow said effusively, kissing Miss Merrivale on both cheeks. "I am so glad to see you. Really it is perfectly cruel that you haven't been to see me. But then, I know," she ran on without giving the other time to speak, "how busy you've been. I've seen your name in the Gossip, and you've been everywhere."
"Yes, I have," returned Miss Merrivale, catching rather awkwardly at the excuse supplied to her.
Chauncy Wilson laughed significantly. He never felt it necessary to treat the widow with any especial respect.
"Mrs. Sampson passes the whole of Sunday forenoon committing the society columns of the Gossip to memory, and wishing her name was there," he chuckled, with a jocoseness which seemed to that lady extremely ill-timed.
But she kept her temper beautifully, long years of social struggle having taught her at least this art of self-restraint.
"Dr. Wilson is nothing if not satirical," she returned, with a conventional smile.
It would not have been displeasing to Miss Merrivale had the floor at that particular instant opened and engulfed her former hostess. It needs unusual breadth of mind to forgive those toward whom we have been discourteous. On the other side of the statue, Frances saw Mrs. Staggchase watching the encounter with a sort of quiet amusement. It flashed across her mind that if she were to become Mrs. Rangely, and live in Boston, it would be necessary to drop Mrs. Sampson from her calling list, and the reflection instantly followed that the sooner the process of breaking the acquaintance were begun the better. Her face insensibly, hardened a little.
"Of course," she said, "one can't help being put into the Gossip, but
I should never think of reading it."
Mrs. Sampson understood that this was a snub, and her cheek flushed.
Wilson laughed maliciously.