"Oh, there you are! Come in, come in, and tell me all about it,—how the mistake was made; and where is it,—the invitation?—you brought it with you, didn't you?"
"No—I—she—"
"Thought it wasn't necessary,—that you could tell me? Was the note lost?" went on Dorothea, in her headlong way of anticipating everything as usual, and only brought up at last by Hope's faint, distressed cry of—
"Oh, Dorothea, there wasn't any invitation!"
"Wasn't any? What—what do you mean?" exclaimed Dorothea, dropping her yellow gown to the floor, and staring with great dilating eyes at Hope.
"I mean that Bessie—that Bessie didn't—that—that it was stopped—that her—"
"Her brother stopped it? Raymond Armitage? He was so mean as that—because I resented the way he treated me there at the theatre? He—he has told her some lie, then, and I will tell her—"
"Oh, Dorothea, Dorothea, wait, wait—listen to me! It is not—it was not her brother, not Raymond Armitage, who stopped it; it was—it was—their mother—it was Mrs. Armitage."
"Mrs. Armitage! and Raymond went to her—he got her to stop it? Oh, how—"
"No, no, he did not go to her. Oh, Dorothea," going forward and taking Dorothea's hand, "won't you wait, won't you listen to me?"