The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful
residences. It had been newly built on an old foundation as a
bridal present to Kate from her father. She had furnished it with
a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout
with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history
just beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few in
town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.
Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. Seeing
Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as
though she herself were the happiest of wives.
"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she
exclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young married
people can be forgotten and pushed aside."
"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as since
I was here last."
"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun to
feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the
unhappy."
But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms
around each other, passed into the parlors.
"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate,
rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriage
home. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to
ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."
"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I
cannot stay.
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