Mrs. Neff was enjoying the rare treat of seeing Persis discomfited, ill at ease. She joined the onset.
"She means Captain Forbes."
"Yes—that's the one," Winifred smiled. "See him often?"
"Oh, once in a long while," Persis confessed. "Why?"
"I just wondered. He used to be so devoted to you."
"Oh, that was ages ago," Persis laughed. And then Crofts came in with his little salver. Persis regarded it with as much dread as if it bore the head of John the Baptist instead of a tiny white card.
Crofts was so proud of remembering his instructions that he murmured, with a senile smile: "You told me you were at home to him, ma'am."
Persis read the name, and it danced before her eyes, fantastically. In the phrase of the prize-fighters, "they had her going." It was all so simple and foolish, yet so naggingly annoying, that she was utterly nonplussed. She stood a moment snapping the card in her fingers. Then she had a mad inspiration. She smiled stupidly between Mrs. Neff and Winifred and said:
"It's my—my lawyer. I—I'll go to the door and see him."
"But I asked him to come up!" Crofts protested in a doddering collapse, and vanished like a ghost at cockcrow.