It was with the first joy of the evening that she saw the curtain descend, and felt that she could tear at full speed for the elevated road and her own dear ferry and her own dear home. She must get there before Arnold, or he would be wild with anxiety; her desire to meet him in town was nothing to her desire now to head him off at home. But she reckoned without her host, literally. Her entertainers had been met by friends as they passed slowly down amid the crush in the aisle, and after the voluble greetings she was panic-struck by hearing one of the strangers say:
“You’ll come to supper with us now? Just around the corner!”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Worthington was almost animated. “If we have time,” she added, turning to her husband.
“Why, we can’t get the twelve o’clock, if we stay, but we will have plenty of time for the twelve-thirty, if Mrs. Gibbons doesn’t object,” said Mr. Worthington.
“We have a friend with us,” said Mrs. Worthington, in languid explanation. “Mrs. Gibbons, Mrs. Freshet, Mr. Freshet.”
“We will, of course, be pleased to have your friend take supper with us,” said Mrs. Freshet.
How could Mrs. Gibbons object? Her eyes pleaded, but her lips were perforce silent; and, comfortably settled in the restaurant, the others talked about matters of common interest, while she sat on the edge of her chair by the gleaming little table, and fumbled at her oysters with her fork, watching the hands of the clock at the end of the room. The Freshets were even more ornately dressed than the Worthingtons, with a floridity of manner that somehow overstepped a certain delicate line.
Once Mrs. Freshet smiled at the guest over her white satin and sables to ask:
“Is this the friend of whose beautiful home I have heard so much?”
“I—I think not,” said Mrs. Gibbons, with a stricken glimpse of the interior of her little dwelling. “I only met the Worthingtons by accident to-night,” she added, impulsively, with a longing for sympathy. “I was looking for my husband.”
“How singular!” said Mrs. Freshet, with a blank stare, and turned at once to continue a conversation on bargains with Mrs. Worthington, while Mrs. Gibbons, trying to make sprightly remarks in response to Mr. Freshet and Mr. Worthington, agonizingly watched the clock. Ten minutes of twelve—five minutes of twelve—she could not have stood it a second longer, when Mr. Worthington rose to hurry them off.