But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at last coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the world that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present at, for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin, Mrs. Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison, rather a foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend an invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair of thirty guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome brother. “For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care who knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her schemes.
“Young lady from the Epoch waiting to see you, sir,” said the servant at Carmichael’s lodgings, encountering him in the hallway of that domicile, as he let himself in by a pass-key late one afternoon after a round of calls.
Carmichael was the picture of self-satisfied complacency. In attire, in bearing, he knew himself to be above criticism by the well informed; and yet his vanity did not disdain the looks of heartfelt admiration cast upon him by the hand-maidens to whom his landlady paid small wages for the promiscuous service of her house.
“Another reporter!” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Did I not tell you never to let them wait for me?”
“She’s in there, sir, not in your sittin’-room,” went on the girl, pointing to the closed door of the boarding-house parlor. “She said it was very important, Mr. Carmichael.”
Smiling at the awe-struck expression of the domestic, whose class can never rid itself of respect for private individuals “wanted” by the press, he opened the door of a long, narrow apartment with abundant cheap draperies, spindle-work furniture, and artificial palms, to find himself confronted by an unwelcome apparition.
“You!” he said, in a tone from which all self-complacency had fled.
“Yes, I. I was assigned to you, and I had to come. Until now I have been fortunate in avoiding such a contingency.”
“I did not know you were in New York,” he stammered, to gain time.