“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Holt, “there is no dust on the skylight.”
“It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam,” he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his former theory.
“You are very stupid not to be able to close it,” she declared; “in a few minutes the place will be flooded. Tell Carroll to come and do it.”
Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting against them. She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired. Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel, above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had an instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand.
Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite.
“My dear,” she began, “I told you the other day what an unexpected and welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit” (Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) “the art of entertaining and pleasing, and I need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your aunt has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. You have been very fortunate.”
“Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt,” echoed Honora, in bewilderment.
“And Susan,” continued Mrs. Holt, “useful and willing as she is, does not possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them.”
Honora could think of no reply to this. Her eyes—to which no one could be indifferent—were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the good lady to guess that her brain was reeling?
“I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of—well, of rather difficult company this summer. Next week, for instance, some prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the Charity Conference in New York. The Japanese Minister has promised to pay me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable tuberculosis homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his family. Then there are some foreign artists.”