"I didn't see a happy one," she answered simply.
An odd feeling that he wanted her to think well of him worried him. Why he should have cared what this bedraggled, bankrupt little creature thought he did not fathom, perhaps it was just that she looked so helpless and so old that his heart smote him. Awkward as a boy he stared out through the bedrizzled windowpane into the spring rain.
"I hope you won't think I'm impertinent," he suggested suddenly, "but I believe you said you arrived from out of town this morning and came directly here. Have you some friend to whom you are going?"
From beneath Louisa's ridiculous old bonnet her hair scraggled untidily, her pallor accentuated the dark circles under her drooping eyelids. Yet when she looked up at him, the glory in those tired eyes surprised him.
"I'm going,"—oh, how she wanted to say "to Dudley Hamilt"! It took all her reserve to finish her sentence calmly! "To eighteen Columbia Heights."
"That's not far," he felt an inexpressible relief that she had somewhere to go, "I'm not quite ready to go home myself, but my car is waiting for me. Suppose we have one of these boys take your bag down for you and that you let my chauffeur drive you to Columbia Heights while he is waiting for me—I should be very glad if you would—"
She did not answer him until he opened the door for her. When she looked up at him he was fairly startled by her wide ingenuous smile.
"I was just pretending," she said clearly, "that I had my ox-cart so that I wouldn't have to walk to find Columbia Heights—I was just thinking how delightful it would be if I did for I'm afraid—as afraid as Margot is of a bat—of all of the things in the street—you are indeed kind—" ah, the stilted phrases with which Mademoiselle had instructed her so many years ago!—"to suggest a drive for me—"
He went back to his papers positively chuckling.
"She's refreshingly different," he thought. "Refreshingly different." But he sighed as he handed the papers to the clerk. The whole case seemed a hopeless tangle. And now that she was gone Felicia herself seemed absolutely unreal. He rubbed his eyes and plunged into the next thing.