alone, she had begun to take a languid interest in the one or two
new purchasers the season had brought, and though the thought of
Evelina was as poignant as ever, it was less persistently in the
foreground of her mind.

Late one afternoon she was sitting behind the counter, wrapped
in her shawl, and wondering how soon she might draw down the blinds
and retreat into the comparative cosiness of the back room. She
was not thinking of anything in particular, except perhaps in a
hazy way of the lady with the puffed sleeves, who after her long
eclipse had reappeared the day before in sleeves of a new cut, and
bought some tape and needles. The lady still wore mourning, but
she was evidently lightening it, and Ann Eliza saw in this the hope
of future orders. The lady had left the shop about an hour before,
walking away with her graceful step toward Fifth Avenue. She had
wished Ann Eliza good day in her usual affable way, and Ann Eliza
thought how odd it was that they should have been acquainted so
long, and yet that she should not know the lady's name. From this
consideration her mind wandered to the cut of the lady's new
sleeves, and she was vexed with herself for not having noted it
more carefully. She felt Miss Mellins might have liked to know
about it. Ann Eliza's powers of observation had never been
as keen as Evelina's, when the latter was not too self-absorbed to
exert them. As Miss Mellins always said, Evelina could "take
patterns with her eyes": she could have cut that new sleeve out of
a folded newspaper in a trice! Musing on these things, Ann Eliza
wished the lady would come back and give her another look at the
sleeve. It was not unlikely that she might pass that way, for she
certainly lived in or about the Square. Suddenly Ann Eliza
remarked a small neat handkerchief on the counter: it must have