“Her room’s the third floor back,” the woman called up after the visitor, who went swiftly over the stairs, intent upon her errand, yet with a faint shudder, a sort of physical shrinking, that made her gather her cloak close about her, lest it might touch the wall or banisters.
“I’m glad I told Thomas to wait,” she said to herself, thinking of the brougham at the door, with the respectable, long-suffering Thomas on the box. At the third floor back she knocked, and waited for a reply; then she knocked again.
“What is it?” a muffled voice asked; “is that you, Mamie? Go ’way! I’m busy.”
“It is I; Miss Wharton; a friend of your aunt’s. Let me in, Nellie.” There was a breathless pause, and then a quick step, and a bolt was snapped back. A slight, startled-looking girl stood in the doorway. Sara entered with a certain fine, regal step that she had, that gave at once a sense of the uselessness of opposing her.
“Shut the door,” she commanded cheerfully, “and let me see you. Come, we will sit down and have a little talk. Oh, open that window first; there is some dreadful perfumery in the room. Ah, that’s nice; fresh air is the nicest sort of perfumery; don’t you think so?”
The girl stared at her without an answer. She was a delicate-looking creature, rather pretty, except that just now her face was stained with tears, and there was a sullen look about her little pale lips. But she had fair hair in a sort of aureole around her low forehead, and shading her really beautiful eyes; and she wore a crimson silk waist,—spotted, to be sure, and ripped on the shoulder, but bringing out the fairness of her skin, and the blue veins on her delicate temples.
“I’m sure I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance,” she said airily; but she was trembling.
“I know your aunt, Mrs. Sherman,” her visitor said; then there was a moment’s silence. Sara Wharton looked about the untidy room,—with its banjo hung with ribbons, its looking-glass rimmed with cards and tintypes stuck edgewise within the frame; its litter of cigarette ends, and its half-empty, uncorked bottle of beer on the marble-topped centre-table.
“Your aunt told me about you, my child,” she said, with a deep, kind look full into the girl’s face.
The color rushed into Nellie’s pale cheeks; but she only said, with vast indifference, “Is that so? Well, she’s very kind, I’m sure.”