“I have no car.  That’s Kitty’s—­I mean Mrs. McBryde’s.  That reminds me.  I have a message from her.  She could not call this afternoon, but she asks me to say she hopes you can both come in Thursday afternoon and have tea with her.  She is always at home on Thursdays and—­”

“Yes, indeed; we’ll be glad to come.”  Mrs. Swink took up Kitty’s card, which had been sent up with mine, and looked at it through her lorgnette, suspended around her neck by a chain studded with amethysts, large and small.  “We’ll come with pleasure.  Won’t we, Madeleine?  Shall we write and tell her?”

“Of course not, mother.  Didn’t you just hear Miss Heath say it was her regular ‘at home’ day?  You don’t write notes for things like that.”  Miss Swink’s eyes again turned in my direction.  “I’m much obliged, but I don’t think I can come.  I’ve an engagement for Thursday.”

“If it’s with Harrie, he won’t mind waiting awhile.”  With unconcealed eagerness Mrs. Swink twisted herself in her tight and too-embracing chair, for the moment forgetting, seemingly, that I was a hearing person.  “You can’t afford to miss a chance like that.  You’ll meet the best people.  Harrie can stay to dinner.  I’ll get tickets for the theatre.”

“He won’t come to dinner.  I asked him.  Says he’s sick.”  The girl’s lips curled slightly.  “He’s always sick when—­”

“Madeleine!” The sudden change in Mrs. Swink’s voice was beyond belief, and with a shrug of her shoulders the girl again looked out of the window.  I was making discoveries with unexpected rapidity, discoveries that were filling me with speculation and promising conclusions that were at variance with Selwyn’s, and for a moment the uncomfortable silence, following the sharp ejaculation, was unbroken by me in the realization of my unwilling participation in a bit of family revelation, and also by inability to think of anything to say.

“I hope you can come.”  My tone was but feebly urging.  “Everybody has such a good time at Kitty’s.  I hope, too, you are going to like our city.”  I looked from mother to daughter as I uttered the usual formulas for strangers.  “This is not your first visit?”

“Oh no—­we’ve been here several times before.  We like it very much.  It’s so distinguay and all that.”  Mrs. Swink’s hands went to her head and she patted her transformation, but failed to straighten it.  “I was born in Alabama, and Mr. Swink in Missouri, and Madeleine in Texas, so we feel kin to all Southerners and at home anywhere in the South; but I like this city best of any in it.  Some day, I reckon, we’ll live here.”  Her voice was significant and again she looked at her daughter, but her daughter did not look at her.

“We think it a very nice city, but I suppose I’d love any place in which I had to live.  That is, I’d try to.  You have old friends here, I believe, and of course you’ll make new ones.”  My voice was even less affirmative than interrogatory.  I hardly knew what I was saying.  I was thinking of something else.