She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words. Mrs. Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile—a too great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms.
"Thank you so much for coming, you angel," she went on playfully, "for doubtless I shall not be visible when you go. You see Donald's off in the back of the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, dusty books and he fancies that he must have my suggestions."
"The door at the end of the hall!" she trilled in sweet but unmistakable dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but faultless. And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, went on upstairs. As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley's door, the bell of the street door sounded in her ears.
Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly out again, opening and closing the door noiselessly. So effectually had she soothed the invalid, that the latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings are so momentous and the silence is so tense, had crept like a mouse from the room.
At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her skirts. Then her ears seemed to catch the sound of voices on the floor below and she remained motionless for a second, listening. She had no desire to encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, no wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed.
No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs. Near the bottom, opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look into the big mirror on the opposite wall. As she turned her head for a final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror —something that held her frozen with embarrassment.
Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs. Wyeth showed unmistakably —Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still embrace of an unrecognized man.
Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward. She had decided to go on, observing nothing—and of course she had observed nothing save an agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth—when a further revelation arrested her.
Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs. Wyeth was lifted and Mrs. Wyeth's big eyes fastened upon hers through the impartial mirror. But their expression was not that of the placid matron observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness. Rather, it was one of acute dismay—almost fear. Poor Mrs. Weyth, who had just said, "Doubtless I shall not be visible when you go!"
Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down the remaining steps, her cheeks hot from her own wretched awkwardness. She wanted to hurry—to run; she might still escape without having reason to suspect that the obscured person was other than he should be in the opinion of an exacting world. Then, as her hand was at the door, while the silken rustling of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the voice of Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the house. It seemed to come from far back in the library, removed from them by the length of the double drawing-rooms —a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice— lazy, drawling——