III
"ONLY COUSIN NEVA"
Letty Morris—"Mrs. Joe"—was late for her Bohemian lunch. She called it Bohemian because she had asked a painter, a piano player and an actress, and was giving it in the restaurant of a studio building. As her auto rolled up to the curb, she saw at the entrance, just going away, a woman of whom her first thought was "What strange, fascinating eyes!" then, "Why, it's only Cousin Neva"; for, like most New Yorkers, she was exceedingly wary of out-of-town people, looking on them, with nothing to offer, as a waste of time and money. As it was, on one of those friendly impulses that are responsible for so much of the good, and so much of the evil, in this world, she cried, "Why, Genevieve Carlin! What are you doing here?" And she descended from her auto and rushed up to Neva.
"How d'ye do, Letty?" said Neva distantly. She had startled, had distinctly winced, at the sound of those affected accents and tones which the fashionable governesses and schools are rapidly making the natural language of "our set" and its fringes.
"Why haven't you let me know?" she reproached. As the words left her lips, up rose within herself an answer which she instantly assumed was the answer. The divorce, of course! She flushed with annoyance at her tactlessness. Her first sensation in thinking of divorce was always that it was scandalous, disgraceful, immoral, a stain upon the woman and her family; but quick upon that feeling, lingering remnant of discarded childhood training, always came the recollection that divorce was no longer unfashionable, was therefore no longer either immoral or disgraceful, was scandalous in a delightful, aristocratic way. "But," reflected she, "probably Neva still feels about that sort of thing as we all used to feel—at least, all the best people." She was confirmed in this view by her cousin's embarrassed expression. She hastened to her relief with "Joe and I talk of you often. Only the other day I started a note to you, asking you when you could visit us."
She did not believe, when Neva told the literal truth in replying: "I came to work. I thought I wouldn't disturb you."
"Disturb!" cried Mrs. Morris. "You are so queer. How long have you been here?"
"Several weeks. I—I've an apartment in this house."
"How delightful!" exclaimed Letty absently. She was herself again and was thinking rapidly. A new man, even from "the provinces," might be fitted in to advantage; but what could she do with another woman, one more where there were already too many for the men available for idling?
"You must let me see something of you," said she, calmer but still cordial. "You must come to dinner—Saturday night." That was Letty Morris's resting night—a brief and early dinner, early to bed for a sleep that would check the ravages of the New York season in a beauty that must be husbanded, since she had crossed the perilous line of thirty. "Yes—Saturday—at half-past seven. And here's one of my cards to remind you of the address. I must be going now. I'm horribly late." And with a handshake and brush of the lips on Neva's cheek, the small, brilliant, blonde cousin was gone.