Her young cousin lost her dreamy look rather abruptly.
"Why, _no_, Cousin Mary! Please don't say that! I only told you that--"
But Cousin Mary, having turned her eyes toward the window, interrupted the womanly talk with a smashing announcement.
"Here's Flora Trevenna coming in--good!" she said in her most matter-of-fact way. "Excuse me a minute, Angela,--I'm bell-hop, you know!"
Angela, who at least knew the ill-omened name, gave one startled gaze, and sprang up. The prospect of casually meeting Mr. Manford was forgotten in her sudden panic alarm.
"I must _go_!" she said, looking about her a little wildly. "I--should have gone some time ago--really! I just stopped in to--"
Mary's colorless face seemed to stiffen a little. So, perhaps, Mr. Mysinger was wont to see it.
"Well, wait just a minute," she ordered, rather than requested. "I'd especially like you to meet Flora."
Nice reward this for being cousinly and inviting Cousin Mary to the bridge-party: _to meet that woman_!
"I--really, I _can't_, Cousin Mary! I'll just run back and see your mother a minute--and then--"
"You can't well be so rude as that, can you?" said Mary. And then she added, as if something within her threw out the words beyond her will: "Why do you call me Cousin Mary all the time? I'm only four years older than you."
The question, of course, expected no notice. Mary was gone into the hall. Yet Angela, left unpoliced, did not immediately fly toward the bedroom region, or run and hide with the leaflets behind the sofa. It may be she feared her hard cousin a little; but besides that, in the strangest and most contradictory sort of way, it appeared that she did not altogether want to fly. She was conscious of an excitement, of a sort of unworthy curiosity.
The front door opened; there were voices. And then Mary Wing returned, her arm slipped brazenly through that of her astounding friend.
And Angela, despite all of the injunctions of propriety, looked; looked, with a sort of fearful fascination. Never in her life before, to her knowledge, had her girlish eyes rested upon a Badwoman. Though virtue went out of her, she _must_ look this once....
"Flora, this is my cousin, Angela Flower, whom you know of, I believe. My friend, Miss Trevenna, Angela."