Elsie moved about the matter at hand with her unfailing practicality. She took off Holly's wraps and improvised a high-chair by means of a dictionary and a pillow. To an accompaniment of gay chatter she made ready her small guest's evening meal, tied a napkin under the fat chin and superintended the business of supping. Hunger and sleep were contending before the bread and milk and soft-boiled egg were finished. Afterward, Elsie carried a very drowsy little boy into her room and made him a nest in her antique-shop four-posted bed. Masterson looked on, mutely attentive to every movement of the two as if some dramatic interest lay in the simple actions. When Elsie returned from the sleeping baby, he abruptly spoke:
"You know, I only mean you to keep him for to-night, not always. I will come back for him. You know all I planned for him and myself. This has hurried me, but I have money enough. Earned money. Did I tell you Mr. Adriance, Tony's father, has offered me a considerable sum to stop 'making a mountebank' of myself at the restaurant? No? He has. I fancy her former husband's occupation grates on Lucille." He laughed, moving his head on the cushions of the high-backed chair. "Well, I refused."
"Of course!"
"You knew I would? Then you grant me more grace than she did."
"She? You said Mr. Adriance offered——"
He glanced keenly at her face, then turned his own face aside that it might not guide her groping thought.
"I must go," he said, again. But he did not move, nor did Elsie.
The pause was broken by Anthony's whistle, the signal which always advised his wife of his return.
But to-night it was not the blithe hail of custom. The clear notes were shaken, curtly eloquent of some anger or distress. Acutely sensitive to every change or mood of his, Elsie caught both messages, the intentional and the one sent unaware. Dropping upon the table a box of matches she had taken up, she ran to the door.
It opened before she reached it. Anthony, his face dark with repressed anger, his movements stiff with the constraint he forced upon them, appeared outlined against the soft, clear dusk of April twilight. He looked behind him, and, holding open the door of his house formally ushered in a guest.