The arrival of Miss Evelyn Tripp, in a hansom cab with a small much-belabelled trunk on top, successfully diverted her mind from this and other ethical problems. Miss Tripp's recent misfortunes had as yet left no traces on her slight, elegant personality. She entered quite in her old fashion, amid a subdued rustle of soft silken garments, a flutter of plumes and a gracious odour of violets.
"My dear!" she exclaimed, clasping and kissing Elizabeth, quite in the latest mode. "How well you are looking! Indeed, you are younger and far, far prettier than the day you were married! How vividly I remember that day, and I am sure you do! How I did work to have everything pass off as it should, and so many persons have told me since that it was really the sweetest wedding they ever saw! It hardly seems possible that it was so long ago. What! You don't tell me that great boy is Carroll! Come here and let Aunty Evelyn kiss you, dear. And Doris? She was such a dear, tiny thing when I saw her last. Oh, that is the baby; you say! No; Elizabeth—not that great child! Fancy! I declare I feel like a Methuselah when I look at my friend's children. I hate to grow old—really old; don't you know."
Miss Tripp paused to remove her plumed hat, while Elizabeth hastened to assure her friend that she really hadn't changed in the least. This was quite true, since Miss Tripp was of that somewhat thin and colourless type of American womanhood upon which the passing years appear to leave little trace.
"Oh, my dear!" sighed Miss Tripp, "I am changed; everything has changed with me, I assure you. Mother and I are obliged to live off air, exactly like wee little church mice. And I am simply worn to a fringe trying to economise and manage. I never was extravagant; you know that, dear, but now——. Well; I don't know what will become of us unless something happens."
"Something will happen, dear," said Elizabeth, more than ever warm-heartedly determined to make her friend as happy as herself. "Now I'm going to leave you to lie down and rest a little before dinner," she added guilefully, as she bethought herself of the various culinary operations already in progress under the unthinking control of Celia. "A friend of Sam's—a Mr. Hickey, chances to be dining here to-night; I hope you won't mind, dear. It—just happened so."
Miss Tripp turned to gaze searchingly at her friend. "You can't mean George Hickey—a civil engineer?" she asked.
"Why, yes; do you know him?"
"My dear; it's the oddest thing; but lately I seem to meet that man wherever I go. He is a friend of the Gerald Doolittles in Dorchester—you know who I mean—and spends a Sunday there occasionally; and when I was visiting Leticia Marston last fall, lo and behold! Mr. Hickey turned up there for the week end! I used to know him years ago when we were both children."
"Sam is associated with Mr. Hickey in a professional way," observed Elizabeth, with a careful indifference of manner. "He dines with us once in a while." She paused to listen, with her head on one side, while a look of alarm stole over her attentive face.