“Good gracious! Marriage?”
The two women laid their heads nearer together, enjoying the awfulness of the thing, though one was a mother and the other was pricked with jealousy in some secret part of her nature.
“Yes—marriage!” repeated the mother. Such an enormity was dreadful.
“It sounds too far-fetched! What will you do?”
“Senator Meiklejohn recommends me to approach the girl.”
“Well, perhaps that is the best. But how to get her address? Perhaps if I asked Rex he would tell it, without suspecting anything. On the other hand, he might take alarm.”
“Couldn’t you say you had secured her a place on the stage, and make him send her to you, to test her voice, or something? And then you could send her on to me,” said the elder woman.
“Yes, that might be done,” answered Helen Tower. “I’d like to see her, too. She must be extraordinarily pretty to capture Rex. Some of those common girls are, you know. It is a caprice of Providence. Anyway, I shall find her out, or have her here somehow within the next few days, and will let you know. First of all, I’ll write Rex and ask him to come for bridge to-night.”
She did this, but without effect, for Carshaw was engaged elsewhere, having taken Winifred to a theater.
However, Meiklejohn was again at the bridge party, and when he asked whether Mrs. Carshaw had paid a visit that afternoon, and the address of the girl had been given, Helen Tower answered: