Glen thought of little else during the day. Over and over again she enacted the scene in her mind and rehearsed her set speech. She could not quite decide whether to let Mrs. Parker speak first, to permit her to plead or to threaten as the case might be, and then to deliver her broadside, or to hold up a hand before the Federation President could open her lips, and say—“Perhaps we shall save time, Mrs. Parker, if I tell you at once that your son’s pursuit of me has been wholly without encouragement. Indeed, I have let him see—so plainly that only a defective mentality or a deliberate insolence would fail to be convinced of it—that I feel for him only the greatest dislike and the deepest contempt, not only for what he is, but for the life he leads, and for everything about him!”
She committed the speech to memory, and when she came home to lunch she rehearsed it before her looking-glass, and she repeated it as she hurried up the hill at six.
Miss Ada had set the stage. The quaint and charming sitting room was in perfect order; there were bowls of flowers on the gate-legged table and on the desk-bookcase, a basket of delicate needlework, and two irreproachable books, and she wore her gray silk and the good lace and the jet jewelry which had been her father’s mother’s.
“My dear,” she said with unaccustomed firmness and finality, “I have decided that it will be best for me to receive Mrs. Parker.”
“But, Miss Ada, I want——”
Miss Ada held up a thin hand. “I said ‘to receive her,’ my child. I will come down first, after Phemie has admitted her. I will seat her, and greet her; I will exchange a few words with her—enough, and of a sort, to let her see that you are not without protection, and then I will summon you, and retire!”
Miss Tenafee followed her program perfectly. Glen, waiting in her bedroom with the sprigged wall paper and the hooked rugs, heard the firm step on the porch, the sharp jingle of the bell, and Phemie’s unhurried tread. There was a pause, during which, she knew, Miss Ada was entering from the dining room, and then, for something over five minutes, the vague murmur of faintly heard voices. This was followed by Miss Ada’s light and ladylike ascent of the stairs, and her flute-like tones, a little louder than usual—“Glen, my dear, a Mrs. Parker is calling. She says she has an appointment with you. Can you see her for a few minutes?”
As Glen passed her she gave her arm a feverish squeeze.
Mrs. Parker was standing when Glen came into the room, looking at the desk-bookcase. “Oh!”—she turned sharply, “Good afternoon, Miss Darrow!”
“Good afternoon,” the girl returned colorlessly.