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It is now high time to introduce the Boarded-up House, which has been staring us out of countenance ever since this story began! For the matter of that, it had stared the two girls out of countenance ever since they came to live in the little town of Rockridge, one on each side of it.
"I wish to introduce you to Mrs. Sewall Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall. The applicant to your advertisement, Mrs. Sewall." Miss Armstrong stood aside. It was she who recovered first from the shock of our meeting. I had seen a slight flush an angry flush I thought spread faintly over Mrs. Sewall's features as she first recognized me. But it faded.
Sewall, observing me suspiciously. "But," I went on, "I did not know to whom I was applying. I answered six other advertisements at the same time. I have, of course, heard of Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall. I doubt if I would be experienced enough for you. Miss Armstrong spoke of my youth downstairs." Mrs. Sewall still continued to observe me.
I'm not what you think. Listen. When I first met you, I had just broken my engagement just barely. I never said a word about it. I let you go on thinking that I you see it was this way my pride was hurt more than my heart. I'm that sort of girl. His mother is Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall. They have a summer place in Hilton, and and " "Don't bother to go into that.
When the little town of Rockridge began to build up, people speculated about it for a while with considerable interest. But as they could never obtain any definite information about it, they finally gave it up, and accepted the queer old place as a matter of course.
This was what I once had dreamed of to be seated beside Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall in her automobile, creeping slowly along Fifth Avenue at dusk. Life works out its patterns for people cunningly, I think. I made some such remark as I sat there beside Mrs. Sewall. "How? Tell me," she said, "how has it worked out its pattern cunningly for you?" We had never mentioned our former relations.
F. Rockridge Sewall at her Beautiful Estate in Hilton. Wedding Set for Early December." I read the announcement two or three times, and afterward the fine print below, containing a long list of the luncheon guests with Edith's name proudly in its midst. The scene of my shame and the actors flashed before me. Ignominy and defeat were no part of the new creature I had become since Lucy's tea.
F. Rockridge Sewall's heavily crested invitations. We had drunk tea in the same drawing-room with her; we had been formally introduced on one occasion; but that was all. She imported most of her guests from New York and Newport. Even the Summer Colonists considered an invitation from Mrs. Sewall a high mark of distinction. Her only son Breckenridge was seldom seen in Hilton.
And long before they came there, long before ever they were born, or Rockridge had begun its mushroom growth as a pretty, modern, country town, the Boarded-up House had stared the passers-by out of countenance with almost irritating persistence.
"I heard Father say once that it was furnished throughout, and left exactly as it was, so some one told him, some old lady, I think he said. It's a Colonial mansion, too, and stood here before the Revolution. There wasn't any town of Rockridge, you know, till just recently, only the turnpike road off there where Warrington Avenue is now. This house was the only one around, for a long distance."
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