“How she hates you.”
“No; she doesn’t hate me. Only she never thought I was of good enough family to marry into theirs.”
“I’m sure the Powells are all right,” said Mrs. Powell, plaintively; “and as for my own family,—”
“It doesn’t matter, mother, what or who we are. We’re not Bostonians, and that settles us for Henrietta Webb! It’s her fetich, that Massachusetts blood of hers! Kimball laughs at her fanaticism. You know his new play is a satire on that subject.”
“Is his play finished?” asked Gerty.
“No; only about three-quarters done. He expects to do up the rest quickly,—after our honeymoon.”
Elsie couldn’t make herself quite realize that her honeymoon was probably destined not to occur,—at least, at present.
She went away to dress, and was so expeditious that she returned just as Whiting came from the library where he had been telephoning the hospitals. “Nothing doing,” he reported; “oh, Elsie, how sweet you look!”
In a dainty white house dress, with her lovely hair simply tucked up in a curly mass, and no ornaments of any sort, Elsie was exquisitely lovely. Her face was pale, but there was a dear, sweet expression that went straight to Fenn Whiting’s heart. He had loved her a long time, and it was in no way his fault that Kimball Webb had won her.
“Almost two-thirty,” he said, tearing his glance away from her dear face.