"Yes; she lives near here," answered Ida, adjusting her veil with both hands, that she might thus screen her flushed face from her friend's view.
At this moment Aunt Patty stepped to one side of the road to avoid the carriage. She looked up, and a sudden smile illumined her face. But Ida looked straight ahead, without making the faintest sign of recognition, though her heart beat so loudly she felt sure Angela must hear it.
Aunt Patty stood still a moment, looking after the carriage, a stunned expression on her face. Then she walked on, clasping tightly the big box.
"She looked like a good-natured old soul," remarked Angela. "And how she stared at us, Ida! She probably doesn't see city people very often. I would like to have her costume for a masquerade."
Ida smiled faintly, but said nothing in reply. She felt that it would not be safe to trust her voice just then. And, oh! what would Aunt Patty say to her when they met again? How would she bear the look of reproach in those kind eyes?
"I wish I had even half of Cynthia's moral courage," she thought. "I was a coward to pass Aunt Patty that way. But there is a taint in my blood, I do believe." But she did not yet realize that it was the taint of selfishness, vanity, and love of luxury, from which grave faults all the unkind and ugly acts of the past three weeks had sprung.
Angela Leverton insisted that Ida should accompany her to Mrs. Lennox's to luncheon, saying that Mrs. Lennox had told her to extend the invitation; and thus it happened that it was late in the afternoon when Ida returned home.
All day she had thought of little else save that unfortunate meeting on the road with Aunt Patty, and she was prepared for coldness and perhaps reproaches—which she felt she richly deserved.
She was ashamed as well as relieved when her aunt greeted her as kindly as ever, and Cynthia assured her that they had both "missed her dreadfully." Evidently Aunt Patty had kept the occurrence of the morning to herself.