"Chick as it can be," she pronounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her." "There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black crêpe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning 'chickly'--poor Paris!" The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with Major--And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my mind!" She made Joan sit down beside her and tell her at once all about Paris, and how many noblewomen she had met, and what they wore, and whether it was true that Frenchmen took more notice of married women, even of middleaged ones than of girls. "Paris is the burg for me!" she sighed. But in the midst of Joan's liveliest recital, her head dropped suddenly forward and she fell asleep. It was the other's first intimation that she had not come after all upon a wild goose chase. She sat for a moment looking at this woman who had tried to be a mother to her, with her absurd golden head and beringed, puffy hands. Then, following an impulse rare with her, she stooped and kissed the painted cheek very tenderly. It was a pity that Effie May did not know. She slipped away to the telephone and called up the Carmichael house. The maid told her that Miss Emily was at home. ("So _she's_ not out riding with him!" thought Joan.) Emily appeared politely surprised by her friend's arrival. "Yes, Archie tells me how ill your step-mother is. I am so sorry! You say you will be here some time before you go back? I shall hope to see you, then." "I hope you may," replied Joan even more politely, "but unfortunately I shall be very busy.... Look here, Emily Carmichael, what's the matter with you anyway? Come right over here and explain." Emily came. When the two had had their talk out and parted, tear-stained but reconciled, Joan went once more to the telephone and called up her husband. His familiar voice over the wire gave her an unexpected thrill. She had forgotten how big and warm it was, even when he sang out of tune. "Archie," she asked directly, "why weren't you at the station to meet me?" He stammered out some rather breathless excuse. "Yes, I know all about that--Emily told me that she often gets you to exercise Pegasus for her when she hasn't time. But why to-day particularly, when you knew I was coming?" His voice was under better control now. "Why, you see, I didn't think it would look well for us to be seen together just now--"