"But surely, dear Mrs. Eveleth, you don't think any of it can be true!"
The elder woman began moving toward the door.
"So many things have been true, dear, that I hoped were not!"
This answer, given from the threshold, left Miss Lucilla not more aghast than disappointed. It brought into the romance features which no single woman can afford to contemplate. She would have entered into the affairs of a wronged heroine with enthusiastic interest; but what was to be done with those of a possibly guilty one? She was so ready for the unexpected that as she stood at a back window, looking into the garden, it was almost a surprise not to find the night-blooming cereus really lifting its exotic head among the stout spring shoots of the peonies. With the vague feeling that the Park might prove more fruitful ground for the phenomenon, she moved to a front window, where she was not long unrewarded. If it was not the night-blooming cereus that drove up in the handsome, open automobile, turning into the Park, it was something equally portentous; for Mrs. Bayford had already played a part in Diane's drama, and was now, presumably, about to enter on the scene again. Miss Lucilla drew back, so as to be out of sight, while keeping her visitors in view. For a minute she hoped that Marion Grimston herself might be minded to make her a call, for she liked the handsome girl, whose outspoken protests against the shams of her life agreed with her own more gentle horror of pretension. Marion, wreathed in veils, was, however, at the steering-wheel, and, as she guided the huge machine to the curbstone, showed no symptoms of wishing to alight. Beside her was Reggie Bradford, a large, fat youth, whose big, good-natured laugh almost called back echoes from the surrounding houses. As the car stopped he lumbered down from his perch, and helped Mrs. Bayford to descend. When he had clambered back to his place again the great vehicle rolled on. It was plain now to Miss Lucilla that a new act of the piece was about to begin, and she hurried back to the library in order to be in her place before the rising of the curtain. For Miss Lucilla's callers there was always an immediate subject of conversation which had to be exhausted before any other topic could be touched upon; and Mrs. Bayford tackled it at once, asking the questions and answering them herself, so as to get it out of the way.
"Well, how is Regina? Very much the same, of course. I don't suppose you'll see any change in her now, until it's for the worse. Poor thing! one could almost wish, in her own interests, that our Heavenly Father would think fit to take her to Himself. Now, I want to talk to you about something serious."
Mrs. Bayford made herself comfortable in a deep, low chair, with her feet on a footstool.
"I suppose you've never guessed," she asked, at last, "why Marion has been with me all this time?"
"I did guess," Miss Lucilla admitted, with a faint blush, "but I don't know that I guessed right."
"I expect you did. No one could see as much of her as you've done without knowing she had a love-affair."
"That's what I thought."