"Grace wants me to apologize for her, and to tell you how very sorry she is to miss you," Mrs. Morris drawled at once, as she came forward to receive me.
She was a charming woman of fifty, with white hair, a young face, and the figure of a girl of twenty. Under the controlled calm of her manner a deep-seated nervousness struggled for expression. She had her daughter's languor, but none of her cool insolence or cynicism; in the look of her gray eyes I caught a glint oddly like that in the eyes of her son.
"Grace was looking forward to your coming," she went on, as she seated herself on a davenport facing the open fire, and motioned me to a place beside her. "But an hour ago she received a note from a friend who is in town only for the night. There was something very urgent in it, and Grace rushed off without stopping to explain. My son Godfrey will be with us—and we hope Grace will be back before you leave."
As if in response to his cue, "my son Godfrey" appeared, looking extremely handsome in his evening clothes, and rather absurdly pleased to find his mother and me so deep in talk that we did not hear him approach.
"Friends already, aren't you?" was his comment on the effective tableau we made, and as we descended in the elevator to the hotel dining-room he explained again how glad he was to have his mother and sister home after two years of absence, and to bring us together at last.
The little dinner moved on charmingly, but before an hour had passed I realized that my host and hostess were under some special strain. Mrs. Morris wore a nervous, expectant look—the look of one who is listening for a bell, or a step long overdue. Several times I saw Godfrey glance toward the door, and once I caught a swift look that passed between him and his mother—a look charged with anxiety. Both obviously tried to throw off their care, whatever it was, and to a degree they succeeded. I was sending my spoon into the deep heart of a raspberry-ice when a servant leaned over the back of my chair and confidentially addressed me.
"Beg pardon, miss," he murmured, deprecatingly. "But if it's Miss Iverson, a person wants Miss Iverson on the wire."
I flushed and hesitated, glancing at Mrs. Morris.
"Party says it's urgent, miss," prompted the servant.
I apologized to my hostess, and rose. There seemed no other course open to me. Mrs. Morris looked mildly amused; her son looked thoughtful as he, too, rose and accompanied me across the dining-room to the door, returning then to the table, as I insisted that he must. In the telephone-booth the voice of Grace Morris came to me over the wire, not languid now, but quick and imperative.