"If you should repeat to Mr. Hickey anything I have told you in confidence, Elizabeth, I think I should die of shame," she quavered. "Promise me—promise me you won't speak of it to anyone!"
Elizabeth promised at once, with an inward reservation in favour of Sam, who could, she was sure, bring order out of this sudden and unexpected chaos in her friend's affairs.
"I am positive that you are mistaken, Evelyn," she repeated, as she embraced and kissed her friend at parting. "I wish you would change your mind."
But Evelyn shook her head with the gentle obstinacy which Elizabeth remembered of old. "I seldom change my mind about anything," she said; "and in this case I simply couldn't. Good-bye dear, dear Betty; and thank you a thousand times for all your kindness to me."
She turned to wave a slim hand to Elizabeth, who stood watching her departure with a curious mingling of exasperation and regret.
A whiff of familiar perfume greeted her upon re-entering the sitting-room and her eyes fell at once upon Evelyn's muff, which she had deposited upon the floor beside her chair and quite evidently forgotten. It was a handsome muff of dark mink, a relic of Evelyn's more fortunate days. Elizabeth stood caressing it absent-mindedly, wondering how she could best restore it to its owner without vexatious delay, when her eyes fell upon Carroll and Doris coming in at the front gate with joyous hops, skips and jumps indicative of the rapture of release from school.
"Here, dears!" she exclaimed, "Aunty Evelyn has just gone, and she has left her muff; take it and run after her; then come directly home. Your lunch will be ready in fifteen minutes."