“He has not asked me what became of the child,” thought Paula, with a certain pang of surprise. “I expected him to say, ‘Shall we not try and see the little fellow, Paula?’ if only to allow me to explain that the child’s father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature’s ‘little feller.’ ” And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate toilet.
“Those men did not mention any names?” suddenly queried that lady, looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.
“No,” said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so carefully arranging. “He expressly said he did not know the name of the person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to overhear, was it not?” she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin in anything out of the domains of fashion.
“I don’t know—certainly—of course—” returned Mrs. Sylvester with some incoherence. “Do you think red looks as well with this black as the lavender would do?” she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a box of feathers.
Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in favor of the lavender.
“I am bound to look well tonight if I never do so again,” said Ona. They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was expected to be present. “How fortunate I am to have a perfect little hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one looked when dressed for the Grand Duke’s ball, or how Mrs. So-and-So