"Yes, my dear, she is low, very low! Restoratives have to be administered constantly," sighed Miss Virginia. "What a charming hat! Paris, I suppose? I always have maintained that the French touch—So that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses—No expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury, isn't it? She has been watching for you every day—seemed to be quite certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."
Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances.
"Cousin Effie May happened to mention that he was out riding this afternoon. Doubtless he had made some engagement before your letter came, or I am sure—" Miss Euphemia nudged her visibly into silence.
"I see," said Joan, flushing a trifle....
If Effie May was as "low" as reported, she showed little sign of it. She welcomed Joan in her usual loud and cheery tones, magnificent in a new lavender tea-gown, as pink-cheeked and carefully coiffed as ever. At her elbow was a box of chocolates.
"I knew that letter'd fetch you!" she chuckled. "Sort o' pitiful, wasn't it? People were mighty surprised to hear you were coming back. But not me. You're not so hard-shelled as you try to be, girlie!"
Like the Misses Darcy, she displayed immediate interest in the Paris hat.
"Chick as it can be," she pronounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her."
"There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black crêpe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning 'chickly'—poor Paris!"
The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with Major—And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my mind!"