“Good Lord, but I’m glad to see you!” she cried. “I’m just about dead of lonesomeness. Why didn’t you telegraph? I’d have met you if your train didn’t get in till two in the morning.”
Ora laughed and disentangled herself, although she kissed Ida warmly. “I just got in—came here on the way from the station and sent my bags to the house—but I always did hate to be met. How beautiful your house is.”
“It’s all right. But it’s about as cheerful to live alone in as one of those palaces in the Via Garibaldi! My, but I’m glad you’re here. You’re the only person I ever missed, and being a real lady for weeks on end is telling on my plebeian health. I didn’t have any relief even in New York. How’s Mark?”
“Quite well, except for his broken leg.”
“Is he here?”
“Oh, no—I left him in Santa Barbara—that is to say at the Club House at Montecito, the fashionable suburb. He has a jolly circle of friends there, and has no desire to travel any further until he can walk.”
Ida put her hands on Ora’s shoulders and turned her round to the light. “What’s up?” she demanded. “You look fine, as pretty as a picture—but—different, somehow.”
“I’ve left Mark.”
Ida glanced into the hall. The opening of back doors indicated that one of the maids had condescended to remember she was a wage earner. “Let’s go upstairs,” said Ida; and as they crossed the hall she said to the girl who was hastening to the front door with a propitiating smile, “You’re just about ten minutes too late, as usual, and the next time it happens you lose your job. I’m not the sort that sits down and wails over the servant question. This house will be run properly if I have to send East for help. Now put on your hat and run down to Mrs. Blake’s house and bring up her bags, and tell them to send her trunks here.
“Yes, you’re going to stay with me for the present,” she said, as Ora protested. “Don’t say another word about it.”