Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/130

120 hope. I never urged a man to come back to me yet, and I don't intend to begin. Oh, I'll manage somehow. Don't worry. You'll see."

She herself worried a good deal. What was she to say? She couldn't go on indefinitely, telling people that Stephen had arrived so late on a Saturday and been obliged to go back so early on Sunday, that he hadn't seen any of his friends. Nor could she repeat many times the subterfuge she had successfully carried through once, of stealing across the river, and burying herself for three or four miserable days in the little red cottage with her father, returning with the story that she had been in New York.

It had been necessary to practice involving deceptions in explaining her absence from such generally discussed functions as the River Club costume dance, and the Annual Charity Ball. Once she had pretended a turned ankle, another time a headache. But the truth was that on both these occasions she had stayed at home and had gone to bed at ten o'clock, because no one had invited her to a dinner-party beforehand. She couldn't go to a dance without either a man or a party!

She had tried to get up a party of her own before the ball. But everybody's plans seemed to be made. Rosamond might easily have included her in the dinner-party she gave. She had two extra men. Neither Edith nor Rosamond had had her to a single dinner-party since Stephen had gone to New York! And they were her "best friends" in Milhampton now. She had had them one night, with two other couples. A real party! Ten in all. She