“Oh, Mrs. Worthington—and Mr. Worthington!” Mrs. Gibbons looked as one who sees a familiar face in the desert. “You don’t know how glad I am to meet you! I’m looking for my husband.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Worthington, with a faint chill of surprise. She was a slight woman, elegantly gowned, with a thin expressionless face. Her husband was like unto her, with the overcoat of opulence. They were new neighbours of Mrs. Gibbons, who kept themselves politely aloof from suburban social life, spending most of their time in town, where they seemed to have a large connection. They were perhaps the last persons to whom Mrs. Gibbons would have turned in a dilemma, but she found comfort in their curious attention as she explained the situation, to conclude by saying:
“Of course, I’ll go right over now to Martin’s. If they waited for me here until after eight, they would be hardly more than started at dinner. All I want to know is what car I ought to take.”
Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered a response to her husband.
“Pray allow us to escort you there,” said Mr. Worthington. “It is really quite on our way.”
“Oh, you’re very kind,” said Mrs. Gibbons, following her leaders gratefully, after a moment or two of demur. She had naturally the feeling that when a man took the thing in hand it would be all right.
“I didn’t know it was so dark at night when you were out alone by yourself, until I came off the ferry-boat,” she confided.
Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered assent. She sat in the trolley car in a sort of isolated though subdued richness of attire, her heavy silken skirts folded over decorously to escape contaminating touch, her embossed cloak and large boa held elegantly in place with her white-gloved hand. She seemed to demand a coach and four. The light spring suit which Mrs. Gibbons had thought so fetching in the afternoon looked cheap and thin in comparison. She did not know of the blue intenseness of her eyes and the rich flush on her young cheek which made each man who entered the car turn to look at her.
When Mr. Worthington bent over from the suspending strap to ask, “You are quite sure your husband is at Martin’s?” she answered with her bright, upward glance, “Oh, yes, quite sure!” He would be at a little round table, with John and Agnes Atterbury, in the red-carpeted room, looking out for her, and how glad they would be to see her!
She dashed up the steps ahead of the Worthingtons, and a waiter came deferentially forward. Why should her heart suddenly fail her when she stood looking in upon the lighted scene?