Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep from falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her. The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women. Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence. "Nell," she said, albeit with cracked voice, "if we're going out to lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, child, put on your best bib and tucker." "Oh, my best bib and tucker!" wailed Aurora. "Sent to the cleaner's this morning, all green stains at the back!" * * * * * If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have appeared so very different from any other women's lunch at the season of roses. Leslie herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned romance, just faintly platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done. Mrs. Foss, the more simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should remember it as an occasion when she had risen to the level, placed the right cards in the fist of destiny, and created an event worthy to take rank at least with those little triumphs of good housewives at whose home the president of their husband's company arrived one night unlocked for and was entertained with brilliant credit. To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly exciting, grand, and memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so much the object of attention and graciousness. She was in the mood to give half of her goods to the poor. After the hostess had risen and made a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to herself, and as if under inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, composed on the spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the table. Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story. * * * * * As it was after five o'clock when she reached home, she was sure she would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been looking forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him and telling him all about it. She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a child, not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to become later by more than half an hour before she scratched a line and sent the coachman to his house with it. The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from Giovanna, that the _signorino_ was absent, having gone to Leghorn. "Well, here's a pretty howdydo!" thought Aurora, sore with surprise and the smart of injury. "If every time I refuse him he's going off like this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to do?" CHAPTER XXIII