so far as to confess that she played the piano herself upon occasion.
Her first impulse, clinched by the familiar feminine excuse that she had
nothing suitable to wear, was to send her regrets. At once she thought
of the scorned finery that Gertrude Sinclair had included in her last
box, and the more she thought about it the more convinced she became
that she had no real reason for refusing. But a swift, strange regret
that her mother had been included in the invitation took the edge off
her anticipations. She tried to dismiss this feeling, but it grew more
definite as the morning progressed.

For days Claire had been striking at the shackles of habit with a rancor
bred of disillusionment. She had been on tiptoe for new and vital
experiences, and yet, for any outward sign, her life bid fair to escape
the surge of any torrential circumstance. Particularly, at the office,
things had gone on smoothly. The other clerks had accepted Claire's
advancement without either protest or enthusiasm. Even Miss Munch had
veiled her resentment behind the saving trivialities of daily
intercourse. She had gone so far as to introduce Claire to her cousin, a
Mrs. Richards, who had come in at the noon hour for a new tatting
design. This cousin was a large, red-faced woman, with an aggressively
capable manner. She had the quick, ferret-like eyes of Miss Munch and
the loose mouth of a perpetual gossip.

"She's the one I told you about the other day," Miss Munch had explained
later--"the housekeeper for _your friend_ Stillman's father-in-law." She
gave nasty emphasis to this trivial speech.

Flint had been direct and business-like almost to the point of
bruskness. But Claire knew that such moods were not unusual, so she took
little stock in the ultimate significance of his restrained manner.