"I'm glad you are doing well," Mr. Mavick added; "your life is before
you, mine is behind me; that makes a heap of difference."
Within a few days Philip received a note from Mrs. Mavick--not an
effusive note, not an explanatory note, not an apologetic note, simply a
note as if nothing unusual had happened--if Mr. Burnett had leisure,
would he drop in at five o'clock in Irving Place for a cup of tea?
Not one minute by his watch after the hour named, Philip rang the bell
and was shown into a little parlor at the front. There was only one
person in the room, a lady in exquisite toilet, who rose rather languidly
to meet him, exactly as if the visitor were accustomed to drop in to tea
at that hour.
Philip hesitated a moment near the door, embarrassed by a mortifying
recollection of his last interview with Mrs. Mavick, and in that moment
he saw her face. Heavens, what a change! And yet it was a smiling face.
There is a portrait of Carmen by a foreign artist, who was years ago the
temporary fashion in New York, painted the year after her second marriage
and her return from Rome, which excited much comment at the time. Philip
had seen it in more than one portrait exhibition.
Its technical excellence was considerable.
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