The week passed delightfully to Patience, although Hal became rather restless toward the end. She arranged Patience’s hair in six different fashions, then decided that the large soft coil suited her best. Patience’s nails were manicured, she was taught how to smoke cigarettes, and select extracts from French novels were read to her. Hal was an accomplished gossip, and regaled her hostess with all the whispered scandals of New York society. She was a liberal education.
Beverly did not call, nor did he write, and Hal anathematised him freely.
“But I have my ideas on the subject,” she said darkly. “Just you wait.”
XIX
On the evening of Hal’s departure, as Patience was braiding her hair for the night, there was a sharp ring at the bell, and a few moments later Ellen came upstairs with a card inscribed “Mr. Beverly Peele.” Patience felt disposed to send word that she had retired, so thoroughly had she lost interest in the young man; but reflecting that he had probably ridden ten miles on a cold night to see her, told Ellen to light all the burners in the parlour, and twisted up her hair.
As she went downstairs she saw a heavy overcoat on the hall table.
“If it had occurred to me that he had come by train,” she thought, “I’d have let him go home again.”
He came forward with his charming smile, looking remarkably handsome in his evening clothes.
“It was kind of you to come,” she said, too unsophisticated to feel embarrassed at receiving a man at night in a house where she lived alone with a servant. “Of course you knew how lonely I must be.”
“Hal is good company, isn’t she?” he asked, holding her hand and staring hard at her. “But I should think she’d miss you more than you’d miss her.”