Tillie was gone.

Oddly enough, the last person to see her before she left was Harriet
Kennedy. On the third day after Mr. Schwitter's visit, Harriet's colored
maid had announced a visitor.

Harriet's business instinct had been good. She had taken expensive rooms
in a good location, and furnished them with the assistance of a decor store.
Then she arranged with a New York house to sell her models on commission.

Her short excursion to New York had marked for Harriet the beginning of a
new heaven and a new earth. Here, at last, she found people speaking her
own language. She ventured a suggestion to a manufacturer, and found it
greeted, not, after the manner of the Street, with scorn, but with approval
and some surprise.

"About once in ten years," said Mr. Arthurs, "we have a woman from out of
town bring us a suggestion that is both novel and practical. When we find
people like that, we watch them. They climb, madame,--climb."

Harriet's climbing was not so rapid as to make her dizzy; but business was
coming. The first time she made a price of seventy-five dollars for an
evening gown, she went out immediately after and took a drink of water.
Her throat was parched.

She began to learn little quips of the feminine mind: that a woman who can
pay seventy-five will pay double that sum; that it is not considered good
form to show surprise at a dressmaker's prices, no matter how high they may
be; that long mirrors and artificial light help sales--no woman over thirty
but was grateful for her pink-and-gray room with its soft lights. And
Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took a lesson from the New
York modistes, and wore trailing black gowns. She strapped her thin figure
into the best corset she could get, and had her black hair marcelled and
dressed high. And, because she was a lady by birth and instinct, the
result was not incongruous, but refined and rather impressive.