Yet her last thought was not of Uncle Rod but of Richard. She had come intending to give him a sharp opinion of his neglect of Nancy. But he had been so glad to see her, and had given her such a good time. Yet she had spoken of Nancy's loneliness.
"I hated to leave her," she said, "but it seemed as if I had to come."
"Of course," he agreed, with his eyes on her glowing face, "and anyhow, she has Sulie."
Marie-Louise, in the days that followed, found interest and occupation in showing the Country Mouse the sights of the city.
"If you want to see such things," she said rather grandly, "I shall be glad to go with you."
Anne insisted that they should not be driven in state and style. "People make pilgrimages on foot," she told Marie-Louise gravely, but with a twinkle in her eye. "I don't want to whirl up to Grant's tomb, or to the door of Trinity. And I like the subway and the elevated and the surface cars."
If now and then they compromised on a taxi, it was because distances were too great at times, and other means of transportation too slow. But in the main they stuck to their original plan, and Marie-Louise entered a new world.
"Oh, I love you for it," she said to Anne one night when they came home from the Battery after a day in which they had gazed down into the pit of the Stock Exchange, had lunched at Faunce's Tavern, had circled the great Aquarium, and ended with a ride on top of a Fifth Avenue 'bus in the twilight.
It was from the top of the 'bus that Anne for the first time since she had come to New York saw Evelyn Chesley.
She was coming out of a shop with Richard. It was a great shop with a world-famous name over the door. One bought furniture there of a rare kind and draperies of a rare kind and now and then a picture.
"They are getting things for their apartment," Marie-Louise explained, and her words struck cold against Anne's heart. "Eve is paying for them with Aunt Maude's money."
"Next October. But Eve is buying things as she sees them. I don't want her to marry Dr. Dicky."
"He isn't her kind. He ought to have fallen in love with you."
"Marie-Louise, I told you not to talk of love."
"Then you'll talk to the empty air. I won't listen. I'll go up there and sit with that fat man in front."