Eva could scarcely believe the evidence of her own eyesight when the blatant spinster, Miss Ruttencutter, stalked noisily in with her silk rustling and her jets rattling, bearing the handsome brunette, Patty, boldly in tow.
Miss Groves, however, was gotten up in more style than her cousin, and looked decidedly well in her rich taffeta silk gown of a deep plum color, with a sealskin sack and large velvet hat with ostrich plumes. The diamonds at her neck and ears were rather grand for daylight wear, but they harmonized well with her large, sparkling, dark eyes and raven hair.
A passionate anger flew all over Eva at the bold, unwarrantable intrusion of the two women, whose shameless treatment of her in the past should surely have secured her from their fawning.
She did not rise from her seat; she did not utter a word; she simply sat and gazed at them in blank astonishment, but her freezing reception did not disconcert them in the least, for the spinster added affably:
“That’s right, Eva, set still! We know you was hurt yesterday an’ must keep quiet. I hope you air feeling better!” and she grabbed Eva’s cold, inert hand, shaking it vigorously, and would have pecked at her cheek with deceitful lips only that Eva resolutely turned her head away.
Patty, following her cousin’s lead, caught and pressed the little hand, but it made no response and dropped heavily from her deceitful grasp, while Eva entirely ignored their presence by directing her stony gaze to another part of the room.
Nothing daunted, however, Miss Ruttencutter selected the softest, most luxurious seat in the splendid room, closely imitated in everything by the less forward Patty, in whose mind was struggling the consciousness of having so cruelly ill-treated her cousin that this attempt to reinstate herself in Eva’s good graces was, to say the least of it, simply outrageous.
Cousin Tabby now turned her gaze on the astonished Mrs. Hamilton, and observed:
“Seeing as Eva is feeling too poorly to interduce us, ma’am, my name is Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, an’ her’n is Miss Patty Groves. What’s your’n?”
“I am Eva’s aunt, Mrs. Hamilton,” coolly replied the lady, with a smile of amusement.