"Her husband is dead," she said at last, faintly.
The caller laughed. "Then he must have died yesterday. Why, didn't you know that was the reason she spent last year in Colorado?"
"For her husband's health," gasped Mrs. Howard, clinging to the last shred of her six months' belief in Mrs. Pendleton's widowhood. "I always had an impression that it was there he died."
The other woman laughed heartlessly. "Did she tell you he was dead?"
Mrs. Howard collected her scattered faculties and tried to think.
"No," she said at last. "Now that you speak of it, I don't believe she ever did. But she certainly gave that impression. She seemed to be always telling of his last illness and his last days. She never actually mentioned the details of his death—but then, how could she—poor thing?"
"She couldn't, of course. That would have been asking too much." Mrs. Howard's guest went off again into peals of unseemly laughter.
When her caller had left, Mrs. Howard climbed up to the chilly skylight room occupied by her daughter and dropped upon the bed, exclaiming:
"Well, I never would have believed it of Mrs. Pendleton!"
Elsie, who was standing before her mirror, regarded her mother in the glass.