Just now, having opened the passage door for the choir, Mrs. Milo had scented something wrong, and was cautioning the boys in a whisper. They came by twos across the room, curving their line a little to pass near to Sue, and looking toward her with troubled eyes. This indeed was a different Sue, in that strange dress, standing so tensely, with averted face.
When the last white gown was gone, Hattie laid her hand on Sue's arm.
"It's all right," she said gently. "Don't you care."
Sue did not speak or move.
"Dear Sue," pleaded the girl.
Sue turned. In her look was pity for all that Hattie had borne of bitterness and wrangling. And as a mother gathers a stricken child to her breast, so she drew the other to her. "Oh, Hattie!" she murmured huskily. "Go—go far. Put it all behind you forever! From now on, Hattie, they can't hurt you any more—can't torture you any longer. From now on, happiness, Hattie, happiness!" She dropped her head to Hattie's shoulder.
"There! There!" soothed the younger woman, tenderly. Someone was entering—a girl with a music-roll under an arm. Nodding to the newcomer, she covered the situation by ostentatiously tidying Sue's hair.
CHAPTER III
"Dear Miss Crosby, I'm so glad to see you again!"
Mrs. Milo came hurrying across the drawing-room to greet the soloist.
Miss Crosby shook hands heartily. She was smartly dressed in a wine-colored velveteen, the over-short skirt of which barely reached to the tops of her freshly whitened spats. Her wide hat was tipped to a rakish angle. She was young (twenty-eight or thirty at most, but she looked less) and distinctly pretty. Her features were regular, her face oval, if too thin—with the thinness of one who is underfed. And this appearance of being poorly nourished showed in her skin, which was pallid, except where she had touched it on cheeks and chin with rouge. A neck a trifle too long and too lean was accentuated by a wide boyish collar of some starched material. But her eyes were fine—not large, but dark and lustrous under their black brows and heavy lashes. Worn in waves that testified to the use of the curling-iron, her yellow hair was in striking contrast to them. But this bright tint was plainly the result of bleaching. And both hair and rouge served to emphasize lines in her face that had not been made by time—lines of want, and struggle, and suffering; lines of experience. These showed mostly about her mouth, a thin mouth made more pronounced by the cautious use of the lip-stick.