As she recalled the conversation an automobile whizzed past her, slowed down and returned, and she saw Mrs. Fenlow leaning out and calling to her:
“I thought it was you, Miss Marne! Waiting for a trolley, aren’t you? Well, don’t wait, jump in with me. I’m going to the city and I’ll take you right to your office.”
Henrietta had met Mrs. Fenlow a number of times during the long-drawn-out time when the architect was endeavoring to meet her wishes with a design for the country house she had determined to build up the Hudson. She had found the elder woman’s open speech and breezy manners amusing, but she had also conceived liking and respect for the sincerity and warm-heartedness that were evident underneath a rather brusque and erratic exterior.
She had been pleased and touched also by the hearty affection and comradeship between Mrs. Fenlow and her only son, Mark Fenlow, her eldest child. Henrietta had met the young man several times in her employer’s office and also at his theatre party and house-warming the previous autumn. She knew that Mark had been graduated from college the previous spring and afterwards had been taken into a trust company in which his father was a stock-holder and director and that his mother, who was very proud of him, expected him to climb the ladder rapidly and become an important figure in big financial operations. Henrietta had found him a debonair youth, full of gay humor and high spirits and having, apparently, much of the same kind of good-heartedness and sincerity which she admired in his mother.
“Have you seen the morning paper?” was Mrs. Fenlow’s first remark, as Henrietta settled into her seat.
“You mean the accident Mr. Brand had with his automobile? Didn’t they have a fortunate escape!”
“That man has the luck of the Irish army!” declared Mrs. Fenlow.
“Did you notice that he was the only one to escape without any injury, though the cause of it was evidently his reckless driving? That’s the way things always happen with him. He gets his pleasure and other people take the consequences.”