"You sure I kin trust you?"
Starr turned on the girl such a gaze of mingled dignity and indignation that her eye quailed before it.
"Well, I s'pose I gotta," she said, dropping her eyes before Starr's righteous wrath. "But 'no weddin' bells' fer you to-night ef yeh keep yer promus. So long!"
Starr shuddered as the girl passed her. The whiff of unwashed garments, stale cooking, and undefinable tenement odor that reached her nostrils sickened her. Was it possible that she must let this creature have a hold even momentarily upon her last few hours? Yet she knew she must. She knew she would not rest until she had been reassured by Carter's voice and the explanation that he would surely give her. She rushed upstairs to her own private 'phone, locking the door on even her old nurse, and called up the 'phone in Carter's private apartments.
Without owning it to herself she had been a little troubled all the afternoon because she had not heard from Carter. Her flowers had come,--magnificent in their costliness and arrangement, and everything he was to attend to was done, she knew, but no word had come from himself. It was unlike him.
She knew that he had given a dinner the evening before to his old friends who were to be his ushers, and that the festivities would have lasted late. He had not probably arisen very early, of course, but it was drawing on toward the hour of the wedding now. She intended to begin to dress at once after she had 'phoned him. It was strange she had not heard from him.
After much delay an unknown voice answered the 'phone, and told her Mr. Carter could not come now. She asked who it was but got no response, except that Mr. Carter couldn't come now. The voice had a muffled, thick sound. "Tell him to call me then as soon as possible," she said, and the voice answered, "Awright!"
Reluctantly she hung up the receiver and called Morton to help her dress. She would have liked to get the matter out of the way before she went about the pretty ceremony, and submitted herself to her nurse's hands with an ill grace and troubled thoughts. The coarse beauty of Lizzie's face haunted her. It reminded her of an actress that Carter had once openly admired, and she had secretly disliked. She found herself shuddering inwardly every time she recalled Lizzie's harsh voice, and uncouth sentences.
She paid little heed to the dressing process after all and let Morton have her way in everything, starting nervously when the 'phone bell rang, or anyone tapped at her door.