a journey.

After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to be the sign of
the return of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden, bearing the
refreshment prepared for her son. What I saw however was two other
female forms, visitors just admitted apparently, who were ushered into
the room. They were not announced--the servant turned her back on them
and rambled off to our hostess. They came forward in a wavering,
tentative, unintroduced way--partly, I could see, because the place was
dark and partly because their visit was in its nature experimental, a
stretch of confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other was
slim, and I perceived in a moment that one was talkative and the other
silent. I made out further that one was elderly and the other young and
that the fact that they were so unlike did not prevent their being
mother and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes,
but the interval had sufficed to establish a communication (really
copious for the occasion) between the strangers and the unknown
gentleman whom they found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was
not my doing (for what had I to go upon?) and still less was it the
doing of the person whom I supposed and whom I indeed quickly and
definitely learned to be the daughter. She spoke but once--when her
companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the next day to
be married. Then she said, 'Oh, mother!' protestingly, in a tone which
struck me in the darkness as doubly strange, exciting my curiosity to
see her face.

It had taken her mother but a moment to come to that and to other things
besides, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.
Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.

'Well, she won't know me--I guess she hasn't ever heard much about me,'
the good lady said; 'but I have come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that
will make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?'

I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured and
familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her
friend _had_ found time to come in the afternoon--she had so much to do,
being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure--it would be all
right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had
come all the way from there) my i