"Of course there must be some mistake," Anna Fleming also declared, when she was told of the fact; and then one and another echoed the same declaration as they heard of the circumstance. Of course there was some mistake! By Thursday, certainly, everybody thought the "mistake" would be discovered and rectified; but Thursday too came and went, and Friday passed by without the desired result. On Saturday morning Dorothea said to Hope,—
"I—I wish you would do something for me, Hope."
"Yes, certainly I will if I can," returned Hope.
"Well, it's just this: I heard that you were going out to drive with Kate Van der Berg this afternoon, and I wondered if you could—if you would call and see Bessie Armitage,—see how she is, you know—and then—and then you might ask her—you might tell her about the invitation,—that I hadn't received it. Of course I don't want to speak to her about it, but somebody else might, and she would want to be told—she'd feel horribly—I should, I'm sure, in her place if I wasn't told—if the mistake wasn't rectified; and so I thought if you would just speak of it—"
"Yes, indeed I will. I'm glad you asked me. I wonder I hadn't thought of it myself, but I'll go round directly the first thing this afternoon," responded Hope, cordially.
"Some mistake?" repeated Bessie Armitage, in a queer, hesitating, questioning way, as Hope sat before her, waiting for the explanation that she had expected would at once make everything right for Dorothea.
"Yes, for she hasn't received her invitation at all, you understand," answered Hope, thinking that Bessie had not understood.
"Yes?" began Bessie, and then stopped, her eyes cast down and the color coming into her cheeks, while Hope and Kate glanced at each other in embarrassed silence. What did it mean? What could be the matter? They were wildly conjecturing all sorts of strange impossible things, and Hope was just determining to break the dreadful silence with these very questions, when Bessie looked up and said:
"I'll tell you—I must tell you; there wasn't any mistake—I knew that Dorothea had no invitation."