"Oh, Frank, I forgot!" said Fancy, as she paused with his wig of horse-hair eked out with braided silk threads, in her hand. "Lucie was here to-day."
Granthope was at the mirror, disguising himself with a long, drooping mustache and thin goatee. He put down his bottle of liquid gum and turned to her.
"Why, she said she didn't have time to wait, and didn't want to tell me anything."
"Said she was afraid to. You're to manage some way to see her to-night, if you can, and she has a tip for you."
"H'm!" Granthope, with Fancy's assistance, drew on the wig, and clapped over his black satin skullcap with its red coral button atop. Then he paused again reflectively.
"It must be something important. If I can only get hold of some good scandal in this 'four hundred' crowd I can have some fun with 'em."
"I should be afraid to trust these ladies' maids; they might give you away any time, and then where'd you be? That would be a pretty good scandal, itself." Fancy shook her head.
"Aren't they all in love with me?" he said, smiling grimly.
Fancy looked dubious. "That's just the trouble. 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'"
Granthope now laughed outright. "Fancy, when you get literary you're too funny for words."
She bridled, stuck out her little pointed tongue at him, and walked into the front office, where she sat down to attend to some details of her own work. At last she finished her writing and went to the closet to put on her hat and jacket.
She appeared at the doorway and called again:
"Mr. Granthope!" He was busy, and did not answer.
He looked up, now, to see her put her thumb to her nose with a playfully derisive gesture, such as gamins use.
Then she looked at him seriously, saying, "When I am, you'll never know it. I'm not afraid of ladies' maids. When you really get into your own class it will be time enough for me to worry. But I wish you wouldn't use those girls. They're all cats, and they'll scratch!"
She was standing before the mirror inside the closet door, with her hat pin between her lips, adjusting her toque to the masses of her russet hair, when there came a knock at the hall door. She looked round and raised her eyebrows, then, after closing the door to the anteroom of the studio, she called "Come in!"