she saw her father sitting, with his hat still on, his face stamped with an almost comical dismay, and holding an unlighted cigar.
"Gheta left me at the Guarinis'," Lavinia halted impetuously. "If it hadn't been for Signor Orsi I shouldn't be here yet; I was completely ignored."
"Heavens!" her father exclaimed, waving her away. "Another feminine catastrophe! Go to your sister and mother. My head is in a whirl."
Her mother, then, had returned. She went forward and was suddenly startled by hearing Gheta's voice rise in a wail of despairing misery. She hurried forward to her sister's room. Gheta, fully dressed, was prostrate, face down, upon her bed, shaken by a strangled sobbing that at intervals rose to a thin hysterical scream. The Marchesa Sanviano, still in her traveling suit and close-fitting black hat, sat by her elder daughter's side, trying vainly to calm the tumult. In the background the maid, her face streaming with sympathetic tears, was hovering distractedly with a jar of volatile salts.
"Mamma," Lavinia demanded, torn by extravagant fears, "what has happened?"
The marchesa momentarily turned a concerned countenance.
"Your sister," she said seriously, "has found some wrinkles on her forehead."
Lavinia with difficulty restrained a sharp giggle. Gheta's grief and their mother's anxiety at first seemed so foolishly disproportionate to their cause. Then a realization of what such an occurrence meant to Gheta dawned
