“I must have service,” Nina replied. “The butler's marching in a parade or something. How nice of you to come and see our little place. It's a band-box, of course.”
Mrs. Sayre sat down, a gross disharmony in the room, but a solid and not unkindly woman for all that.
“My dear,” she said, “I am not paying a call. Or not only that. I came to talk to you about something. About Wallace and your sister.”
Nina was gratified and not a little triumphant.
“I see,” she said. “Do you mean that they are fond of one another?”
“Wallace is. Of course, this talk is between ourselves, but—I'm going to be frank, Nina. I want Wallie to marry, and I want him to marry soon. You and I know that the life of an unattached man about town is full of temptations. I want him to settle down. I'm lonely, too, but that's not so important.”
Nina hesitated.
“I don't know about Elizabeth. She's fond of Wallie, as who isn't? But lately—”
“Yes?”
“Well, for the last few days I have been wondering. She doesn't talk, you know. But she has been seeing something of Dick Livingstone.”