Page:The fifth wheel (1916).djvu/223

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IN THE SEWALL MANSION
201

Mrs. Scot-Williams? I'm to meet her at the Carl. She enjoys a girl with ideas."

"In this?" I indicated my suit. We were drawing up to the lighted restaurant, where costly lace veiled from the street candle-lighted tables.

"In that?" Mrs. Sewall looked at me and smiled. "Talk as you have to me, my dear, and she will not see what your soul goes clothed in."

My enemy—Mrs. Sewall! My almost friend now! She could sting, but she could make honey too. Bittersweet. I went with her to drink some tea.

That was the beginning of our intimate relations. Mrs. Sewall invited me the very next day to lunch with her in the formal dining-room, with the Sewall portraits hanging all around. We talked more suffrage. It seemed to amuse her. She was not particularly interested in the woman's movement. It simply served as an excuse.

One stormy evening not long after the luncheon invitation Mrs. Sewall invited me to stay all night. She was to be alone and had no engagement. She asked me frequently after that. We slipped into relations almost affectionate. I discovered that Mrs. Sewall enjoyed my reading aloud to her. I found out one day, when her maid, who was an hourly irritation to her, was especially slow about arranging her veil, that my fingers pleased and satisfied. Often, annoyed beyond control, she would exclaim, "Come, come, Marie, how clumsy you are! All thumbs! Miss Vars, do you mind? Would you be so kind?" Often I