“Excuse me, Alva, but I can not go to-day. I—I am not feeling well. Besides, I have just commenced a letter to your brother.”
Alva did not ask what would be written to her brother; she could guess only too well by the thorn in her own heart.
She repressed a bursting sigh of sympathy for St. George, and said, determinedly:
“Then tell me where to find her, for I am going alone this very hour.”
“She was a young salesgirl at the handkerchief counter at Maury & Co.’s. I bought those exquisite cobweb lace handkerchiefs from her, you know.”
“Her name, mamma?”
“I did not ask it, Alva; but you cannot fail to know her, for there is no one like her. She is the loveliest salesgirl in New York, and looks like a princess.”
“Tall or short, mamma?”
“Of medium height, dear, slenderly yet exquisitely formed, with a face of rarest beauty.”
“It should be a boy’s face, mamma.”