It was delightful to her to see how agreeable everyone was to Rosamond. She was stopped a dozen times in her passage of the wide apartment, and she joined the group about Madam Milano with three attractive men in her wake. Patricia found it very exciting. She thought of the dances at the Tennis Club with something like scorn, and even the parties at the studio last winter seemed to pale before this splendid entertainment.
After an hour she began to change her mind, however, and she looked about for any sign of Rosamond in vain. There was no one in the rooms she knew. She could not even see her hostess, whose peculiar head-dress and angular shoulders she was sure she could recognize at any distance. Madame Milano had not sung and there seemed, from the lively hum of conversation that rose above the music of the famous orchestra, little hope of it.
She felt suddenly very lonely. These strangers with their indifferent stares made her more uncomfortable than she had ever been in her life. She longed to be able to speak one word to some friendly creature. And then, just as she was actually about to rise and flee to the shelter of the dressing-room, there was a stir, and the soft undertone of the orchestra stopped in the middle of a Hungarian Czarda.
Patricia leaned forward. Rosamond was going to sing!
Her loneliness dropped from her and her face shone. She drank in the trills and flourishes of the selection which her friend had chosen as though the notes were golden ambrosia. After Rosamond had ended her song and gracefully yet firmly declined an encore Patricia was still glowing.
She came to herself, though, when a woman near her, without lowering her voice, said with an amused look, "I'm glad that nice child in the corner is looking happier. It's positively cruel to allow so young a girl to mope about like that."
Patricia retained enough of her spirit to look the amused lady calmly in the eyes, while her pretty tipped-up nose assumed a more sprightly angle. That made her feel much better, and after Madame Milano had poured out the liquid jewels of her faultless voice, she felt better still.
She waited then in expectancy that now Rosamond would appear to take her to Madame Milano, but no one came, and in a shorter time than it seemed to her she rose, spurred by the amused lady's eyes, and made her way among the chatting throngs straight to the dressing-room, where she ordered her wraps and made her way downstairs with the calm of hope destroyed.
She passed the footmen at the door, quite aware of their stares and equally undaunted by them. Through the lane of canvas she gained the pavement and so was out in the night streets—alone for the first time in her sheltered life.
Artemis Lodge was only a few squares distant and she almost ran the short blocks, arriving at the green entrance door out of breath and suddenly realizing that the custodian left at eleven o'clock and Rosamond had the night key which Miss Ardsley allowed only to privileged ones.