"P.P.P.S.—Also a very poor rag-picker with, I think, twelve children. He looks even worse than this."
The routine of her life having been thoroughly established the preceding winter, she fell easily again into the old lines. Every day she lunched with Madame de Nemours. Sometimes, when engagements left them both free, they dined together in quite a stately manner in the high, old tapestry room, and once in a fortnight she was bidden to dinner with friends of this great lady—Bartand, the dramatist; President Arnot; or Prince Cassini, with his terrible vitality and schemes for universal betterment.
One morning she was disturbed at her studies by a card from the Countess, saying that Mrs.
Lennox was below and wished to see her. She had grown accustomed to the desire of strangers to be presented to her, for, as Dermott had told her, the news of her voice was already newspaper copy. In the drawing-room she found Madame de Nemours by the window talking animatedly, in her pleasant, low voice, to a lady, young and vivacious, wearing aggressive mourning.
"And this," the stranger cried, in a high, strong, musical voice, coming forward, "is the Miss Dulany of whom I have been hearing such wonderful things?" She waited for no response. "I have just been telling the Countess that I almost met you at Ravenel House, in Carolina, over two years ago. There was a house-party, and you refused to come."
Katrine flushed and turned pale again suddenly, as she realized that this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry, and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she had met them riding together by the ford at Ravenel.
"I was ill, I remember," Katrine explained, recovering herself; "unfortunately ill, since I was prevented from meeting you." There was both consideration and compliment in her tone.
"Everything has changed a great deal since
then," Mrs. Lennox went on, "with me as well as with others. I lost my mother the following winter," she glanced at her mourning as she spoke, "and Mrs. Ravenel has been back to the old place but once, for a few weeks only. Mr. Ravenel (you remember Mr. Ravenel?) has gone in for all sorts of things since then. Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling the Countess of him."
"I do not know Mr. van Rensselaer," said Katrine.