"Sho, Sis!" said Mr. Winship; "don't my beard hide it? Declare I clean forgot."
Soon Helen returned to pin a flower at my button-hole.
"Where can Cadge be?" she cried gaily; but her hands shook and she dropped the rose. "Do you suppose she's interviewing a lunatic asylum?"
What had changed her voice and burned fever spots in her cheeks? I wasn't so indifferent as I had seemed to Kitty's news. Had she told Helen, too, that Ned Hynes—what was he to my betrothed?
"Can't you rest somewhere and just show for the ceremony?" I said, "Nelly, you're not strong."
"There's not a place big enough for a mouse. But did you mean it? Do I really look well to-night? Am I just as beautiful as I was three-four months ago, or have I—"
"Oh, do slip out and 'phone the Star! I can feel my hair whitening," whispered Kitty, turning to me hastily, as a couple of women entered. "See, folks are beginning to come."
I went out into the warm and rainy night, but there was no Cadge at the Star office. By the time I had returned with this information, the eyry held a considerable gathering. Mrs. Baker had arrived, and her two daughters; but I had no time to wonder at Milly's coming, for behind me entered Mrs. Van Dam and then, among a group of strangers, I noticed Hynes.
Involuntarily, at sight of him, my eyes turned to Helen; but not a muscle of her face betrayed deeper feeling than polite pleasure as she helped Kitty receive the wedding guests, greeting the General cordially, Hynes with graciousness.
Kitty's welcome to Mrs. Van Dam would have been irresistibly funny, if I had had eyes to see the humour.