There was a ring at the bell, and Marion was glad of the interruption. For the first time in his life Bert was growing too serious.
“Oh, Dollie!” she cried, as she tore open a note that had come to her by a messenger boy, “Miss Lindsay is very ill, and wishes me to come to her at seven o’clock, if I possibly can. I must go, of course, but Mr. Ray is coming to call. Still, perhaps, I can return early; it’s not a very great distance.”
“Try to,” said Dollie, “for, of course, Adele will be with him. Oh, I am so glad they are coming! I have not seen them since my wedding.”
Bert went away soon, and the two girls busied themselves in tidying up the flat, and at about a quarter of seven Marion started to visit Miss Lindsay. Little did she dream when she said good-bye to Dollie that another trap had been laid for her unsuspecting feet and that she was going deliberately to her own destruction.
She smiled happily at her sister as she tripped down the steps, and her sweet face was so radiant with joy and health that nearly every one she passed turned at once and looked after her.
“What an awful neighborhood,” she thought, as she reached Miss Lindsay’s block at last. It was farther from Dollie’s than she had anticipated.
When she saw the number she was seeking on the door of a dilapidated tenement-house, she breathed a sigh of sympathy for little Miss Lindsay.
“I did not dream she was so poor,” she murmured, and then, lifting her skirts carefully, she picked her way through a swarm of dirty-faced children and boldly mounted the rickety steps of the dingy tenement.
Up, up she went, and still no signs of Miss Lindsay. She inquired on each landing, but not half of the women whom she asked understood her, for they were mostly ignorant foreigners who did not know a word of English.
At last, at the very top of the house, she saw a half-open door, and almost as she touched it she came face to face with Miss Lindsay.