Sarah turned from the door. Jane sat down hastily at her dressing-table and began to take down her hair. Miss Parrot had seated herself at the window and was picking up Jane’s thimble. Jane could catch her reflection in the slanting plane of the cheval glass, near the dressing-table. She was looking at Jane with a faint smile of cynical amusement. Her eye was no longer impersonal. Jane hated Miss Parrot, at the moment. She hated herself for that question she had never been able to answer—had that been Miss Parrot’s white sleeve in the playroom bay window, that Thanksgiving afternoon when Jimmy. She pushed in the last hairpin and rose to her feet.
“Ready, Miss Parrot?” she said evenly.
“Yes,” said Miss Parrot, handing her the gown. She lingered a moment, to put away the thimble and close the sewing box. Again she looked Jane over with that not impersonal eye. “You look very pretty, Mrs. Carver,” she said.
Jane dabbed a little perfume on her cheeks and hurried from the room without answering. In the hall she stumbled over the children’s cocker spaniel. It yelped sharply, then wagged its tail and started after her down the stairs. At the foot of them Jane saw Belle, just starting up for Cicily’s room. She and Jack were coming out for the weekend. They must have been on the train with Jimmy. The child looked up at her with wide, round eyes of admiration. The eyes were so round and the admiration so apparent that Jane stopped and laughed down at her. Belle was really charming. She looked like an apple blossom.
“Hello, little Belle,” said Jane.
At the sound of her voice, Jimmy Trent came out of the living-room. He looked taller than he really was, beside the staring child. His eyes were very bright and blue and his necktie exactly matched them. He stood smiling up at her from the foot of the staircase. As Jane ran down the last steps, he took her hand and held it for a minute. Jane laughed up at him.
“You know little Belle Bridges,” she said, withdrawing her hand.
“Of course I do,” said Jimmy. “Hello, little Belle Bridges!” He too smiled down at the child. Jane stooped over and kissed little Belle’s cheek. It felt very smooth and cool, like the petal of an apple blossom. The little spaniel was jumping forgivingly about her feet. Jane picked it up and held it tenderly in her arms and kissed the top of its little black head and looked up at Jimmy over its long, floppy ears. Then they turned away from Belle toward the living-room door.
“I didn’t expect you till four,” said Jane, smiling up at Jimmy over the spaniel.
He paused to let her precede him through the living-room door.
“I couldn’t wait to play you my last cadenza,” said Jimmy. “Jane, that concerto is finished. I couldn’t wait an hour—”
“Silly!” said Jane, looking over her shoulder at Jimmy, as they passed into the living-room. In a moment she heard little Belle, scrambling upstairs to Cicily’s bedroom. “But I can’t wait myself to hear it. Oh, Jimmy, I can’t believe—truly I can’t believe—that you’ve really done it.”
“You know who made me,” said Jimmy. His eyes searched hers for a moment, before he turned to pick up his fiddle-case from the table. “It’s really your concerto.” He tucked his violin under his chin and tuned it airily as he strolled across the room, just as he had done on that first Lakewood evening. He took his stand on the hearthrug, bow in hand, and looked down at her. “Your concerto, Jane,” he repeated. It seemed to Jane, at the moment, a very solemn dedication. She looked up at Jimmy very seriously as he raised his bow. She never took her eyes off his slender, swaying figure, until the last note had sounded.
“It’s beautiful, Jimmy,” she said then, solemnly, “it’s very beautiful.”
“You know why, don’t you?” said Jimmy, looking down at her from the hearthrug.
Just then Sarah came in with the tea.
II
“You wouldn’t think it was so funny,” said Isabel scathingly, “if you’d heard Muriel talking about it yesterday in Flora’s hat shop. She didn’t even stop when I came in.”
“I don’t think it’s funny,” said Jane loftily. “I think it’s ridiculous.”
“Muriel ought to be ashamed of herself,” said Mrs. Ward.
They were all sitting around the fire in Mr. Ward’s library, waiting for Minnie to bring in the tea-tray.
“She said it was as plain as a pikestaff,” said Isabel. “She said it right before me. She said that just as soon as she and Flora came in they saw you two sitting over at a corner table. She said that you had a quart of champagne, Jane, and that you said something and that Jimmy smiled and lifted his glass and looked at you and kissed the rim before he drank from it.”
“It was only a pint,” said Jane. “We were drinking to the success of his concerto. He finished it last week.”
“It was very unfortunate,” said Mrs. Ward, “that Muriel had to come in at just that moment.”
“It was very unfortunate,” said Isabel severely, “that Jane had to be there at all. If you want to lunch with him, Jane, why can’t you lunch at the Blackstone or the Casino as if you’d like to be seen, instead of sneaking off to a place like De Jonche’s where no one you know ever goes—”
“We didn’t sneak,” said Jane hotly. “And we go to De Jonche’s because we both like snails. They have the best in town.”
“You go?” said Mrs. Ward. “Had you been there before?”
“Often,” said Jane briefly.
“When I
