As the hall door shut after him, the library door swung wide, and Dora came bouncing in, waving an arm joyously. "Your path is clear!" she announced.
At her back was Sue, looking properly guilty, and scrambling into a coat that would hide the bridesmaid's dress. "Just what did you tell mother?" she inquired.
"I said you went that way,"—with a jerk of the head that set the tight braids to bobbing.
"Oh, what did you tell her that for!" mourned Sue. "It's the way I must go!"
"It is the truth," said Dora, solemnly, "and, oh, Miss
Susan,"—chanting—"'a lying tongue is but for a moment.'"
"I know," answered Sue, exasperated; "'a lying tongue is but for a moment,' and 'deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' but, Dora, this is a desperate case. So you find my mother and tell her that—that I'm probably downstairs in the basement,—er—er—well, I might be setting the mouse-trap." And giving Dora an encouraging push in the direction of the hall, Sue disappeared on swift foot into the vestibule.
CHAPTER V
Miss Mignon St. Clair was affectionately, and familiarly, known as Tottie. About thirty, and thus well past the first freshness of youth, she was one of that great host of women who inadvertently and pathetically increase the look of bodily and nervous wear and tear by the exaggerated use of cosmetics—under the comforting delusion that these have just the opposite effect. With her applications of liquid-white and liquid-red, Tottie invariably achieved the almost grotesque appearance of having dressed in the dark.
In taking as it were a final stand against the passing of her girlhood, Miss St. Clair had gone further than most. First, in very desperation, she had colored her graying mouse-tinted hair a glowing red; and then, as a last resort, had heroically, but with mistaken art, bobbed it.
The effect, if weird, added to the lady's striking appearance. With glasses, and an unbelted Mother Hubbard gown made out of antiqued gold cloth, she might have passed for a habitué of the pseudo-artistic colony that made its headquarters not far away from her domicile. But such was her liking for jewelry, and plenty of it, and for gowns not loose but clinging, that, invariably equipped with an abundant supply of toothsome gum, she looked less the blue-stocking, or the anarchistic reformer, than what she aimed to resemble—a flaming-tressed actress (preferably of the vampire type), a shining "star."