“Stay and have lunch with me,” said Magsie.

“I can’t to-day.  I’m lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry’s.  I tell you I’m in deadly earnest.  I’m going to break in!  Suppose I come here for you at just three.  Meanwhile, you think up someone.  How about Bryan Masters?”

Magsie made a face.

“Well,” said Billy, departing, “you think of someone, and I will.  Perhaps the Royces would go—­a nice little early party.  The worst of it is, no one’s in town!”

She ran downstairs and jumped into the beautiful car.

“Sherry’s, please, Hungerford,” said Billy easily.  “And then you might get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two.”

The man touched his hat.  Billy leaned back against the rich leather upholstery luxuriously; she was absolutely content.  Joe was quiet and away, dear little old Breck was in seventh heaven down on the cool seashore, and there was a prospect of a party to-night.  As they rolled smoothly downtown the passing throng might well have envied the complacent little figure in coffee-colored madras with the big heron feather in her hat.

When Billy was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for posting.  She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote Rachael’s name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her usual care, and carried the package to the elevator boy for mailing.  As she came back to her rooms a caller was announced and followed her name into Magsie’s apartment almost immediately.  Magsie, with a pang of consternation, found herself facing Richie Gardiner’s mother.

Anna would never have permitted this, was Magsie’s first resentful thought, but Anna was on a vacation, and the elevator boy could not be expected to discriminate.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gardiner,” said Magsie; “you’ll excuse my dressing all over the place, but I have no maid this week.  How’s Richie?”

Mrs. Gardiner was oblivious of anything amiss.  She sat down, first removing a filmy scarf of Magsie’s from a chair, and smiled, the little muscle-twitching smile of a person in pain, as if she hardly heard Magsie’s easy talk.

“He doesn’t seem to get better, Miss Clay,” said she, almost snorting in her violent effort to breathe quietly.  “Doctor doesn’t say he gets worse, but of course he don’t fool me—­I know my boy’s pretty sick.”

The agony of helpless motherhood was not all lost upon Magsie, even though it was displayed by a large, plain woman in preposterous clothes, strangely introduced into her pretty rooms, and a most incongruous figure there.

“What a shame!” she said warmly.