A delicate film of dust obscured the shining surface of the writing table. Mrs. Salisbury's mouth curved into a cold smile when she saw it; and again she spoke aloud.
"Thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents, indeed!" she said. "Ha!"
Nearly two hours later Alexandra rushed in. Alexandra looked her prettiest; she was wearing new furs for the first time; her face was radiantly fresh, under the sweep of her velvet hat. She found her mother stretched comfortably on the library couch with a book. Mrs. Salisbury smiled, and there was a certain placid triumph in her smile.
"Here you are, Mother!" Alexandra burst out joyously. "Mother, I've just had the most extraordinary experience of my life!" She sat down beside the couch, her eyes dancing, her cheeks two roses, and pushed back her furs, and flung her gloves aside. "My dear," said Alexandra, catching up the bunch of violets she held for an ecstatic sniff, and then dropping it in her lap again, "wait until I tell you—I'm engaged!"
"My darling girl—" Mrs. Salisbury said, rapturously, faintly.
"To Owen, of course," Alexandra rushed on radiantly. "But wait until I tell you! It's the most awful thing I ever did in my life, in a WAY," she interrupted herself to say more soberly. Her voice died away, and her eyes grew dreamy.
Mrs. Salisbury's heart, rising giddily to heaven on a swift rush of thanks, felt a cold check.
"How do you mean awful, dear?" she said apprehensively.
"Well, wait, and I'll tell you," Alexandra said, recalled and dimpling again. "I met Jim Vance and Owen this morning at about twelve, and Jim simply got red as a beet, and vanished—poor Jim!" The girl paid the tribute of a little sigh to the discarded suitor. "So then Owen asked me to lunch with him—right there in the Women's exchange, so it was quite comme il faut, Mother," she pursued, "and, my dear! he told me, as calmly as THAT!—that he might go to New York when Jim goes—Jim's going to visit a lot of Eastern relatives!—so that he, Owen I mean, could study some Eastern settlement houses and get some ideas—"
"I think the country is going mad on this subject of settlement houses, and reforms, and hygiene!" Mrs. Salisbury said, with some sharpness. "However, go on!"