Emily had repressed her surprise, and answered, vaguely, "No; that is, not a great deal. Eve—not when Eve isn't here."
What did Mrs. Phillips mean? Had she seen Martha with that man?
"I hear the old grandmother gets worse all the time," Mrs. Phillips had innocently continued. Emily had said she didn't know.
It was after four then; soon after that there had come a long-distance 'phone call: four friends in the next county were driving up to dance in Chicago. Would Martha go with them? They'd be along soon after seven. As Emily hung up the receiver she saw a sort of chance. She would go out to the golf course and bring Martha home to get ready for the evening, and take occasion to see exactly who was playing there, and then she would be rid of this uneasiness. She hated taking the car herself, but it was time she made sure of what was going on.
So she drove out, inch by inch around by the dusty detour, over the well-known ruts. She turned the car anxiously through the gates, which always looked so narrow when she was driving that to miss their post seemed almost miraculous. She chose her place of stopping very carefully, a large place easy to turn around in, in case Martha wasn't there and she had to go back by herself.
She shut off the engine, congratulating herself the more upon the neatness of her achievement because some other woman had stopped her car—but not her engine—wrong way about, at some distance, so that she sat almost facing Emily. A stranger she was. With a swanky little scarlet hat on, and rouged; waiting for some one, looking intently towards the path through the trees by which the players came up to the shack of a clubhouse.
And then it occurred to Emily that that woman must be Eve's sister, because that must be the car that Eve drove. She looked, naturally, with renewed interest. The face was in some ways like Eve's. But it was no wonder Eve didn't like her. She was a discontented woman, ill-natured, with hollows about her eyes, like Eve, but more accentuated; altogether hard faced. She was probably waiting for her husband.
"Shall I go and speak to her, or shall I not?" Emily wondered. The woman hadn't once looked in her direction. Either she was intent upon the path and had not heard anyone coming, or purposely avoided chances of being intruded upon.
Emily had not been sitting there undecided one minute when the woman leaned suddenly forward, shifting her position to get a better view of something. Emily's eyes turned, naturally, to see what she was so eagerly looking at. There were four people walking towards them at a little distance, two in front, young Mr. and Mrs. Williams, two behind, little Martha Kenworthy and that man. Martha had on a pleated white skirt and a belted overblouse of pale yellow crêpe de Chine, with a square neck, and she was walking along, slight and young, bareheaded, of course, with her face all flushed pink, looking up, all smiling and interested, to that man, who seemed, as always, to be leaning down over her. They came walking towards her. They were talking about something so amusing, so intimately interesting, that they paid no attention to the two cars. Emily sitting there, sickening, saw Mrs. Williams call Martha's attention to her mother. She saw the absorbed two turn from their topic and look towards her.
She had looked again quickly at the woman. She knew what she had been waiting for. She saw the discontented face flush angrily, as Eve's did sometimes; and then, just as that man drew near, when he had seen his wife sitting there, she started her car and drove hastily away.