"Here's your ticket. Did you say _tickets_--two? Oh, thanks. Of course you
needn't go."
"But I mean to go. Mrs. Amyot is an old friend of mine."
"Do you really? That's awfully good of you. Perhaps I'll go too if I can
persuade Charlie and the others to come. And I wonder"--in a well-directed
aside--"if your friend--?"
I telegraphed her under cover of the dusk that my friend was of too recent
standing to be drawn into her charitable toils, and she masked her mistake
under a rattle of friendly adjurations not to be late, and to be sure to
keep a seat for her, as she had quite made up her mind to go even if
Charlie and the others wouldn't.
The flutter of her skirts subsided in the distance, and my neighbor, who
had half turned away to light a cigar, made no effort to reopen the
conversation. At length, fearing he might have overheard the allusion to
himself, I ventured to ask if he were going to the lecture that evening.
"Much obliged--I have a ticket," he said abruptly.
This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no answer; and it was he
who spoke next.
"Did I understand you to say that you were an old friend of Mrs. Amyot's?"
"I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. Amyot I had the
pleasure of knowing many years ago. My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too--"
"To pay for her son's education?"
"I believe so."
"Well--see you later."
He got up and walked into the house.
In the hotel drawing-room that evening there was but a meagre sprinkling
of guests, among whom I saw my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on a
sofa, with his head against the wall.
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