And
she was not even sure that it was going to do him any good.
When her guest walked into her little back parlor that evening, Sharlee
was feeling very self-sacrificing and noble. However, she merely looked
uncommonly pretty and tremendously engrossed in herself. She was in
evening dress. It was Easter Monday, and at nine, as it chanced, she was
to go out under the escortage of Charles Gardiner West to some
forgathering of youth and beauty. But her costume was so perfectly
suited to the little curtain-raiser called Taking the Little Doctor Down
a Peg or Two, that it might have been appointed by a clever
stage-manager with that alone in mind. She was the haughty beauty, the
courted princess, graciously bestowing a few minutes from her crowding
fetes upon some fourth-rate dependant. And indeed the little Doctor,
with his prematurely old face and his shabby clothes, rather looked the
part of the dependant. Sharlee's greeting was of the briefest.
"Ah, Mr. Queed.... Sit down."
Her negligent nod set him away at an immense distance; even he was aware
that Charles Weyland had undergone some subtle but marked change since
the morning.
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