Isabel hesitated, and lifted an ear to the floor above. There was not a sound, nor was it likely that Lyster would make his appearance before dinner. Paula had announced her intention of visiting her children in the course of the afternoon; she would hardly awaken for luncheon. While she hesitated Mrs. Hofer began to coax in her eager commanding fashion.
"Oh, do come! Please come! I'm mad, mad to have you all to myself for one day. Chloroform them—"
"You wouldn't lunch with me?"
"I will entertain you first. Please, please, come!"
"Very well," said Isabel, laughing. "I doubt if they ever know the difference. I won't be a minute getting ready."
She ran up-stairs, and during the half-hour of her toilette Mrs. Hofer examined everything in the down-stairs rooms and nodded an emphatic approval.
XXIII
It was nearly midnight. Isabel, her head still buzzing after a kaleidoscopic day, which included much motoring and many words, felt no inclination for bed, moreover was not only curious to hear Gwynne's impressions, but felt a pleasant sense of anticipation in talking the day over with him. He had telephoned that he was going down to Burlingame for dinner, but should manage to return to the house in the neighborhood of midnight. She wondered if he had met as many people and received as many bewildering impressions as she had done.
If she had cherished a lingering delusion that aught remained of the old proud reserved character of the society of her mother's time, it had vanished before the chatter of her hostess and the experiences of the day. They had not lunched at The St. Francis, after all. As they reached the entrance Mrs. Hofer capriciously changed her mind, and decided to make a dramatic descent with Isabel upon the house of a friend whom she knew to be entertaining informally, and where she was always sure of a welcome. The house was out at The Mission, a generic term in these days for the valley under the shadow of Twin Peaks, so sparsely populated by the padres. There were still a few large wooden houses, surrounded by grounds, that looked like country seats in the midst of that wilderness of cheap and hideous streets; built perhaps thirty or forty years before, when "The Mission" was a suburb, and for old affection's sake still inhabited in spite of a thousand drawbacks. Isabel approached this place in a fever of anticipation, for it was none other than the old estate of Juan Moraga, and through a grille in its vanished adobe wall Concha Argüello had held tryst with her Russian lover, Rézanov.