In fact, the girl made her own opportunity. Noticing that evening that Evelyn took up a dignified position in the parlor and had Cassie conduct all the guests thither, Violet quickly disposed of the first person that claimed her attention, and, having made her best toilet—having restored her cheeks to a resemblance of their pristine glow, coiffed her russet hair, and donned her best of linen—she descended quietly to the first landing on the stairway, there to take up her watch. Before she was again in demand, she saw the servant admit Wesley Dyker. She ran quickly downward and, just as Cassie stepped forward to precede him, brushed by him in the rosy twilight of the hall.
"Ask to see me," she whispered. "Ask to see Violet. Don't let on I told you. I've heard something you want to know about O'Malley."
Before the man's shadowy figure could come to pause, she had passed him and caught up to Cassie.
"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been calling for you for five minutes. I need some more water in my room."
She turned and reascended the stairs, but her door had not long been closed before the servant was knocking upon the panel.
"Here's you' water, Miss Vi'let," said Cassie. "An' Miste' Dyker wants fer to see you daown in de back parlor."
Violet took the useless pitcher, made sure that the remnant of Katie's note was secure in its hiding-place, and hurried, with Cassie following, to the garish room in which Dyker was awaiting her.
He was seated on the lazy, pillowed sofa on which Violet had fallen asleep so soon after her arrival in this house. He was in evening-clothes that served him, on the East Side, much as the advertised portraits of certain patent-medicine makers serve their proprietors, the flaccid whiteness of his face still bearing traces of past beauty, the weakness of his mouth hidden by his crisp, short, brown mustache, and his heavy lids concealing the secret of his steel-gray eyes.
He half rose as she entered, but she motioned him to sit still.
"Hello!" she said, with the easy manner of the house, which always seemed to presuppose a previous acquaintance. "Have you ordered anything? I'm terribly dry."