"Why, I don't know how to make Current Expenses out of all that!" she had said to Mr. De Guenther. "It looks to me exactly like about ten months' salary! I'm perfectly certain I shall get up in my sleep and try to pay my board ahead with it, so I shan't have it all spent before the ten months are up! There was a blue bead necklace," she went on meditatively, "in the Five-and-Ten, that I always wanted to buy. Only I never quite felt I could afford it. Oh, just imagine going to the Five-and-Ten and buying at least five dollars' worth of things you didn't need!"
"You have great discretionary powers—great discretionary powers, my dear, you will find!" Mr. De Guenther had said, as he patted her shoulder. Phyllis took it as a compliment at the time. "Discretionary powers" sounded as if he thought she was a quite intelligent young person. It did not occur to her till he had gone, and she was alone with her check-book, that it meant she had a good deal of liberty to do as she liked.
It seemed to be expected of her to stay. Nobody even suggested a possibility of her going home again, even to pack her trunk. Mrs. De Guenther casually volunteered to do that, a little after the housekeeper had told her where her rooms were. She had been consulting with the housekeeper for what seemed ages, when she happened to want some pins for something, and asked for her suit-case.
"It's in your rooms," said the housekeeper. "Mrs. Harrington—the late Mrs. Harrington, I should say——"
Phyllis stopped listening at this point. Who was the present Mrs. Harrington? she wondered before she thought—and then remembered. Why—she was! So there was no Phyllis Braithwaite any more! Of course not.... Yet she had always liked the name so—well, a last name was a small thing to give up.... Into her mind fitted an incongruous, silly story she had heard once at the library, about a girl whose last name was Rose, and whose parents christened her Wild, because the combination appealed to them. And then she married a man named Bull.... Meanwhile the housekeeper had been going on.
... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr. Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks."
"Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that careful planning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in his day-room now?"
For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want to see him again just now. Besides, it was nearly eleven and time a very tired girl was in bed. She wanted a good night's rest, before she had to get up and be Mrs. Harrington, with Allan and the check-book and the Current Expenses all tied to her.
Some one had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy new nightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plain toilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisite ivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hasty bath—there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for a moment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington—and slid straight into bed without even stopping to braid her loosened, honey-colored hair.
It seemed to her that she was barely asleep when there came an urgent knocking at her door.