mercy of Fate. And
Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the
hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny
little electric run-about of Miss Winifred Jarvyse, a handsome young
Diana, who had never seen the inside of the great walled estate next
her father's private grounds, so that she waved her hand cordially,
stopped out of pure good feeling for the absent-minded stranger in the
beautiful coat, and asked if she could drop her at the station!

"Why, yes, thank you," said Miss Mary, still vaguely.

"It's going to rain and I've no cover on," said Winifred. "It's a pity
about your coat."

"I can turn it," said Miss Mary, and standing up for a moment she
slipped the sleeves of the ulster, shook herself slightly and sat down
a totally different woman. So that when (such was the perfection of
the System) a quick call to the ticket office set the agent searching
twenty minutes later for a tall woman in a light tan coat, alone,
without luggage, he replied very truly that no such person had entered
his station. Only a friend of Miss Jarvyse had come to the 2:15, a
lady in a dark plaid ulster with bag and umbrella, in Miss Jarvyse's
car.

"I hope you found your friends--er--doing well?" said Miss Jarvyse
delicately.

"Thank you, they were very well," said Miss Mary gravely. And she took
the 2:15 for New York.

Nothing further than the immediate moment was in her mind. To her
thought, long confused and fleeting, the dreamlike character of this
sudden change seemed natural and simple. She had no plan of campaign,
no route of escape, no future. Her mind, relaxed from the quick
decision that had cleared its mists in the moment of action, began to
dull and settle and fall into its old rut of mechanical despair, when
suddenly the voices of two women in the seat behind her grew louder and
rose above the jar of the train.

"And so she decided to get it over while he was in the hospital. She
thought the dye would have to wear off gradually, but there's a place
on West Twenty-eighth Street--near Sixth Avenue, I think--where a
French woman guarantees to remove any dye, perfectly harmlessly, in two
hours. So she had it done, and he was delighted. My dear, she was
fifty, and the grey hair really was more becoming to her. Everybody
thinks so. But nobody knew her--I never saw such a change, at first.
If you know anybody who wants it done, just send them there. Some
Fre