The weeks went on and Passover drew nigh.  The recurrence of the feast brought no thrill to Esther now.  It was no longer a charmed time, with strange things to eat and drink, and a comparative plenty of them—­stranger still.  Lack of appetite was the chief dietary want now.  Nobody had any best clothes to put on in a world where everything was for the best in the way of clothes.  Except for the speckled Passover cakes, there was hardly any external symptom of the sacred Festival.  While the Ghetto was turning itself inside out, the Kensington Terrace was calm in the dignity of continuous cleanliness.  Nor did Henry Goldsmith himself go prowling about the house in quest of vagrant crumbs.  Mary O’Reilly attended to all that, and the Goldsmiths had implicit confidence in her fidelity to the traditions of their faith.  Wherefore, the evening of the day before Passover, instead of being devoted to frying fish and provisioning, was free for more secular occupations; Esther, for example, had arranged to go to see the debut of a new Hamlet with Addie.  Addie had asked her to go, mentioned that Raphael, who was taking her, had suggested that she should bring her friend.  For they had become great friends, had Addie and Esther, ever since Esther had gone to take that cup of tea, with the chat that is more essential than milk or sugar.

The girls met or wrote every week.  Raphael, Esther never met nor heard from directly.  She found Addie a sweet, lovable girl, full of frank simplicity and unquestioning piety.  Though dazzlingly beautiful, she had none of the coquetry which Esther, with a touch of jealousy, had been accustomed to associate with beauty, and she had little of the petty malice of girlish gossip.  Esther summed her up as Raphael’s heart without his head.  It was unfair, for Addie’s own head was by no means despicable.  But Esther was not alone in taking eccentric opinions as the touchstone of intellectual vigor.  Anyhow, she was distinctly happier since Addie had come into her life, and she admired her as a mountain torrent might admire a crystal pool—­half envying her happier temperament.

The Goldsmiths were just finishing dinner, when the expected ring came.  To their surprise, the ringer was Sidney.  He was shown into the dining-room.

“Good evening, all,” he said.  “I’ve come as a substitute for Raphael.”

Esther grew white.  “Why, what has happened to him?” she asked.

“Nothing, I had a telegram to say he was unexpectedly detained in the city, and asking me to take Addie and to call for you.”

Esther turned from white to red.  How rude of Raphael!  How disappointing not to meet him, after all!  And did he think she could thus unceremoniously be handed over to somebody else?  She was about to beg to be excused, when it struck her a refusal would look too pointed.  Besides, she did not fear Sidney now.  It would be a test of her indifference.  So she murmured instead, “What can detain him?”