CHAPTER III

The following week Claire was surprised to find a letter on her desk at the office.  The few written favors that came her way usually were addressed to the Clay Street flat, so that she was puzzled by this innovation and the unfamiliar handwriting.  Glancing swiftly at the signature, she was surprised to see the name “Lily Condor,” scrawled loosely at the foot of the note.  It seemed that Mrs. Condor was giving a little musicale in Ned Stillman’s apartments on the following Friday night, and, if one could believe such a thing, the lady implied that the evening would scarcely be complete without the presence of Claire Robson—­or, to put it more properly, Claire Robson and her mother.

As Claire had scarcely said a half-dozen words to Mrs. Condor on the night of the Red Cross concert, this invitation seemed little short of extraordinary.  But, as Claire thought it over, she recalled that there had been some general conversation about music, in which she had admitted a discreet passion for this form of entertainment, even going so far as to confess that she played the piano herself upon occasion.  Her first impulse, clinched by the familiar feminine excuse that she had nothing suitable to wear, was to send her regrets.  At once she thought of the scorned finery that Gertrude Sinclair had included in her last box, and the more she thought about it the more convinced she became that she had no real reason for refusing.  But a swift, strange regret that her mother had been included in the invitation took the edge off her anticipations.  She tried to dismiss this feeling, but it grew more definite as the morning progressed.

For days Claire had been striking at the shackles of habit with a rancor bred of disillusionment.  She had been on tiptoe for new and vital experiences, and yet, for any outward sign, her life bid fair to escape the surge of any torrential circumstance.  Particularly, at the office, things had gone on smoothly.  The other clerks had accepted Claire’s advancement without either protest or enthusiasm.  Even Miss Munch had veiled her resentment behind the saving trivialities of daily intercourse.  She had gone so far as to introduce Claire to her cousin, a Mrs. Richards, who had come in at the noon hour for a new tatting design.  This cousin was a large, red-faced woman, with an aggressively capable manner.  She had the quick, ferret-like eyes of Miss Munch and the loose mouth of a perpetual gossip.

“She’s the one I told you about the other day,” Miss Munch had explained later—­“the housekeeper for your friend Stillman’s father-in-law.”  She gave nasty emphasis to this trivial speech.

Flint had been direct and business-like almost to the point of bruskness.  But Claire knew that such moods were not unusual, so she took little stock in the ultimate significance of his restrained manner.