She suddenly turned on Sidney.
“Palmer gave his bachelor dinner at the Country Club last night. They all drank more than they should. Somebody called father up to-day and said that Palmer had emptied a bottle of wine into the piano. He hasn't been here to-day.”
“He'll be along. And as for the other—perhaps it wasn't Palmer who did it.”
“That's not it, Sidney. I'm frightened.”
Three months before, perhaps, Sidney could not have comforted her; but three months had made a change in Sidney. The complacent sophistries of her girlhood no longer answered for truth. She put her arms around Christine's shoulders.
“A man who drinks is a broken reed,” said Christine. “That's what I'm going to marry and lean on the rest of my life—a broken reed. And that isn't all!”
She got up quickly, and, trailing her long satin train across the floor, bolted the door. Then from inside her corsage she brought out and held to Sidney a letter. “Special delivery. Read it.”
It was very short; Sidney read it at a glance:—
Ask your future husband if he knows a girl at 213 —— Avenue.
Three months before, the Avenue would have meant nothing to Sidney. Now she knew. Christine, more sophisticated, had always known.