Joyce looked at the man; but she put down her work and proceeded to the gray parlor. A pretty woman, vain and dashing, threw up her white veil at her entrance.
“Well, Joyce, how are you?”
Joyce, always pale, turned paler still, as she gazed in blank consternation. Was it really Afy who stood before her—Afy, the erring?
Afy it was. And she stood there, holding out her hand to Joyce, with what Wilson would have called, all the brass in the world. Joyce could not reconcile her mind to link her own with it.
“Excuse me, Afy, but I cannot take your hand, I cannot welcome you here. What could have induced you to come?”
“If you are going to be upon the high ropes, it seems I might as well have stayed away,” was Afy’s reply, given in the pert, but good-humored manner she had ever used to Joyce. “My hand won’t damage yours. I am not poison.”
“You are looked upon in the neighborhood as worse than poison, Afy,” returned Joyce, in a tone, not of anger but of sorrow. “Where’s Richard Hare?”
Afy tossed her head. “Where’s who?” asked she.
“Richard Hare. My question was plain enough.”
“How should I know where he is? It’s like your impudence to mention him to me. Why don’t you ask me where Old Nick is, and how he does? I’d rather own acquaintance with him than with Richard Hare, if I’d my choice between the two.”