"I was sure it was you before you spoke at all," he said quietly. "I recognized an aroma the moment I came into your presence—"
"An aroma?" Mrs. Thatcher interrupted questioningly.
"I know not whether it was fragrance or reminiscence, but either is equally sweet."
Huntington's gallantry, half assumed, half real, as it seemed to those who heard his words, passed simply as a pleasantry with all except Cosden, who knew his friend too well not to recognize the presence of something deeper beneath the lightly spoken expressions. But Thatcher's voice brought him back from his surmises.
"We are counting on you both to join us," he insisted. "Our party will be incomplete without you."
"Please come," Mrs. Thatcher added. "For the last twenty-four hours I have been renewing all my girlhood friendships, and poor Edith Stevens here hasn't had a chance even to express an opinion. That for Edith is real self-sacrifice."
"Edith is sitting back and learning a thing or two," Miss Stevens retorted calmly.
"Do come and give her a chance to demonstrate," Mrs. Thatcher appealed.
"I suppose bachelors are as necessary to the demonstration as guinea-pigs to the laboratory," Huntington said. "Come on, Connie; let us take a chance."
No truer statement had ever been made in jest than that the previous twenty-four hours had been a period of self-sacrifice to Edith Stevens. She was younger than Mrs. Thatcher, and their friends accused them of accepting each other as foils to accentuate their contrasting characteristics. Miss Stevens was slight and erect, and was always gowned with a taste and skill which gave her an air of distinction; her friend possessed such striking fascination of person and manner that she gave distinction to any fashion she might adopt. Mrs. Thatcher's activities accomplished results; Edith's seemed simply the expression of an eternal unrest. The younger woman's hair was light, and her eyes blue, while Mrs. Thatcher was a perfect brunette; and the approach of the two women to the same subject was always from a different standpoint. Yet they had been the closest of friends from school days.