struck me in the darkness as doubly odd, exciting my curiosity to see her
face.

It had taken the elder woman but a moment to come to that, and to various
other things, 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've 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 imagination had associated her with that
indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as
the South End--a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a
pretty face, in which the daughters are an "improvement" on the mothers
and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen more gloriously domiciled,
gentlemen whose wives and sisters are in turn not acquainted with them.

When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a
tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,
I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies, to
introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen
had recommended them--nay, had urged them--just to come that way,
informally and without fear; Mrs. Allen who had been prevented only by