Chapter II
Mrs. Kildair knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York which is drawn from all levels, without classification, and imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing. Her home, in fact, supplied that need of all limited and contending superimposed sets, a central meeting-ground where one entered under the protection of a flag of truce and departed without obligation. She knew every one, and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her resources. No one had ever met a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limit of acquaintanceship had been touched. Mrs. Enos Bloodgood, who saw her most and gave her the fullest confidence, knew no more than that she had arrived from Paris five years before, with letters of introduction from the best quarters. Her invitations were eagerly sought by leaders of fashionable society, prima donnas, artists, visiting European aristocrats, and men of the moment. Her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of wit and good taste.
As soon as Slade’s present had been received she passed into the dining-room to assure herself that everything was in readiness for the informal chafing-dish supper to which she had invited some of her most congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of the studio. Then, entering her Louis Quinze bedroom, which exhaled a pleasant stirring atmosphere of perfume, she slipped off her filmy purple tea-gown and chose an evening robe of absolute black, of warm velvet, unrelieved by any color, but which gave to her shoulders and arms that softness and brilliancy which no color can impart.
Several times she halted, and, seating herself at her dressing-table, fell into a fascinated contemplation of the great ruby that trembled luminously on her finger like a bubble of scarlet blood. When, in the act of deftly ordering the masses of her dark ruddy hair, her white fingers lost themselves among the tresses, she stopped more than once, entranced at the brilliancy of the stone against the white flesh and the sudden depths of her hair.
She rose and began to move about the room; but her hand from time to time continued its coquetries above her forehead, as though the ring had suddenly added to her feminine treasury a new instinctive gesture.
At half-past seven, having finished dressing, she opened the doors which made a thoroughfare between the studio and the small dining-room, and passed into the larger room, where, at one end, Kiki had brought forth three Sheraton tables, joined them, and set them with crystal and silver.
“Put in order my bedroom,” she said, with an approving nod, “and then you can go.”
She moved about the studio, studying the arrangements of the furniture, seeing always from the tail of her eye the scarlet spot on her finger.
“I wonder what it’s worth,” she said softly. “Ten, fifteen thousand at the least.” She held the ring from her, gazed at it dreamily. “I wonder what woman’s eye has looked upon you, you wonderful gem,” she whispered; and, as though transported with the vision of the past, she drew it slowly toward her and pressed her lips against it.
At this moment a buzz sounded from the hall, and she recovered herself hastily and, a little ashamed, said with a feeling of alarm as she went to the door:
“Slade is entirely too clever; I must send it back tomorrow morning.”
Before she could reach the door it had opened, and there entered, with the informality of assured acquaintance, a young man of twenty-five or -six, smiling, boyish, delighted at having stolen a march on the other guests.
“You are early,” said Mrs. Kildair, smiling with instinctive reflection of the roguish enjoyment that shone on his handsome, confident face.
“Heavens, haven’t I been beating the pavements for fourteen minutes by the watch!” he said, laughing. “Regular kid trick.” He took her hand, carrying it to his lips. “The way they do in France, you know.”
“You’re a nice boy, Teddy,” she said, patting his hand. “Now, hang up your coat, and help me with the candles.”
She watched him as he slipped his overcoat from the trim wide shoulders, revealing all at once the clean-cut, well-tailored figure, full of elasticity and youth. Teddy Beecher always gave her a sense of well-being and pleasant content, with his harum-scarum ways and inviting impudence. As he roused no intellectual resistance in her, she was all the more sensitive to the purely physical charm in him, which she appreciated as she might appreciate the finely strung body and well-modulated limbs of a Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini.
“Will I help you? Command me,” he said, coming in eagerly. “Don’t you know, there’s a little silver collar about my neck, and the inscription is, ‘This dog belongs to Rita Kildair.’ Jove, Rita, but you’re stunning tonight!”
He stood stock-still in frank amazement. He had known her but a short while, and yet he called her by her first name—a liberty seldom accorded; but the charm he unconsciously exerted over women, and which impatiently mystified other men, was in the very audacity of his enjoyment of life, which imparted to women the precious sense of their own youth.
“Really?” she said, raising her hand to her hair, that he might notice the glorious ruby.
“Look here—I’ve only got a miserable thirty thousand a year, but I’ve got a couple of uncles with liver trouble and a bum heart. Say the word—I’m yours.”
While he said it with a mock-heroic air, there was in his eyes a flash of excited admiration that she understood and was well pleased with.
“Come, Teddy,” she said, a little disappointed that he did not perceive the ring. “To work. Take this taper.”
He took the wax, contriving to touch her fingers with feigned artlessness.
“I say, Rita, who’s the mob here tonight? Do I know any one? I get the place next to you, of course?”
“Begin over there,” she directed. “The Enos Bloodgoods are coming; you’ve met her here.”
“I thought they were separated, or something.”
“Not yet.”
“By George, Rita, there’s no one like you—serving us up a couple on the verge.”
“That is not all—I like situations,” she said, with her slow smile.
“I like Elise; but as for the old boy, he can slip on a banana peel and break his neck, for all I care.
“Then there’s a broker, Garraboy, Elise’s brother.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Maud Lille, who’s written clever books—a journalist.”
“Don’t know her—hate clever women.”
“Nan Charters—”
“Who?” said Beecher, with upraised wick.
“Nan Charters, who played in ‘Monsieur Beaucaire.’”
“Bully!”
She smiled at his impetuousness, and continued:
“Mr. Majendie and the Stanley Cheevers.”
“Oh, I say—not those—”
“Well?” she said as he stopped.
“You know the gambling story,” he said reluctantly.
“Club gossip.”
“Of course,” he said, correcting himself. “One of my friends was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well-united game, and have an unusual system of makes. They are very successful—let it go at that. You don’t mean to say that Majendie’ll be here?”
“I expect him.”
“He was a friend of the dad’s—a corker, too. I don’t know much about those things, but isn’t he supposed to be up against it?”
Three knocks in close succession sounded on the outer door, and Garraboy entered with an air of familiarity that was displeasing to the younger man. The two saluted impertinently, with polite antagonism, detesting each other from the first look.
“Go on with the candles, Teddy,” said Mrs. Kildair, signaling to the newcomer, a young man of forty who seemed to have been born bald, wrinkled, and heavy-eyed. The long, bald head on the thin, straight little body, and the elongated white collar, gave him somewhat the look of an interrogation-mark. He was heavily perfumed.
“What’s the news of the market?” she asked.
“Another odd turn—went up a couple of points,” he said, looking at her hand. Unlike Beecher, he had instantly noted the new acquisition with a malicious smile. His thumb gave a little jerk and he added softly: “Something new?”
“Yes. Why should the market go up?” she said, seeming to be intent only on the effect of the bracketed candles, that now licked the tapestried walls with their restless tongues.
“There’s a general belief that a group of the big fellows will stand behind the trust companies in return for certain concessions. I say,” he continued, watching the ruby ring, which instinctively she tried to conceal from him, “I hope Elise isn’t going to make a fool of herself about Majendie.”
“Teddy, Teddy, you’ve forgotten the two over the plaque!” she said aloud—and, a little lower: “She won’t; don’t fear.”
“I know her better,” he said, without, however, betraying the slightest brotherly agitation. “She is apt to do something crazy if anything went wrong with Majendie. Bloodgood’s a hard-skinned old brute, but if there was anything public he’d cut up ugly.”
“I hear he’s in the market.”
“Yes—on the short side, too—in deep.”
“And you?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I thought we never told secrets, Mrs. Kildair. Who else is coming? Am I representing the element of respectability again tonight?”
“The what?” She looked at him steadily until he turned away nervously, with the unease of an animal. “Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Garraboy.”
“By George,” he said irritably, “if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the Secret Service, Mrs. Kildair.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling appreciatively, and returned toward young Beecher, who was waiting by the piano with ill-concealed resentment.
The Stanley Cheevers entered—a short, chubby man with a bleached, vacant face tufted with mustache and imperial, devoid of eyebrows, with watery eyes that moved slowly with the motion of his gourd-like head; Mrs. Cheever, voluble, nervous, over-dressed, young with the youth of a child and pretty with the prettiness of a doll.
Beecher, who knew them, bowed with a sense of curiosity to Mrs. Cheever, who held him a little with a certain trick she had of opening wide her dark, Oriental eyes; and dropped, with a sense of physical discomfort, the hand that Cheever flabbily pressed into his.
“Decidedly, I am going to have a grand little time by myself,” he said moodily. “Where the deuce does Rita pick up this bunch?”
The Enos Bloodgoods were still agitated as they entered. His lips had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn.
“Permit me, my dear,” he said, taking off her wrap, and the words struck those who heard them with a sudden chill.
He was of the unrelenting type that never loses its temper, but causes others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner, while in his bulgy eyes was an impudent stare which fastened itself like a leech on the person addressed, to draw out his weakness.
Elise Bloodgood, who seemed tied to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash which she assumed, rather than felt, in her attitude toward society—just as she touched with red, cheeks that were meant to be simply the background of eyes that were extraordinary, with a lurking sense of tragedy.
“Rita, dear, I am almost frantic tonight,” she said hastily, in one of those intimate moments of which women avail themselves in the midst of their enemies.
“The last rumors are good,” said Mrs. Kildair, bending over her ostensibly to arrange her scarf.
“Who told you?”
“Your brother. Every one downtown believes the panic is stopped. The market has gone up. Gunther and Snelling are Bernard’s personal friends.”
“Friends?” she said bitterly. “Yes, that’s just the trouble.”
“Besides, he is coming tonight—you knew?”
“Yes, I knew,” said Mrs. Bloodgood, with a glance at her husband, who, at the other side of the studio, seemed intent only on examining a reliquary in carved stone.
“Then he will tell you himself,” said Mrs. Kildair, rearranging a little ornament that made a splash of gold on the black hair of her companion. “Be careful—-don’t talk too much now.”
“What do I care?” she said rebelliously. “It has got to end sometime.”
She passed her husband, her dark shoulder flinching unconsciously at his near presence, and gave her hand to Stanley Cheever and young Beecher, who, though utterly unconscious of the entanglements of the evening, was struck by the moody sadness in her eyes that so strangely contradicted the laugh that was on her lips. But as he was wondering, a little constrained, how best to open the conversation, the door opened once more and two women entered—Nan Charters, who arrived like a little white cloud, vibrantly alert and pleased at the stir her arrival occasioned, and Maud Lille, who appeared behind her as a shadow, very straight, very dark, Indian in her gliding movements, with masses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness.
“Oh, dear, am I dreadfully late?” said Nan Charters, who swept into the studio the better to display her opera-cloak, a gorgeous combination of white and gold Japanese embroideries, which, mounting above her throat in conjunction with a scarf of mingling pinks, revealed only the tip of her vivacious nose and sparkling eyes.
“You are strangely early,” said Mrs. Kildair, who presented Beecher with a gesture which at the same time directed him to attend to the wraps.
“Thank you,” said Miss Charters, with a quick smile, and by an imperceptible motion she allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders and glide into the waiting hands, revealing herself in a white satin shot with pigeon red, which caused the eyes of all the women present to focus suddenly. Garraboy, Cheever, and Bloodgood, who knew her, came up eagerly.
Teddy Beecher, his arms crowded with the elusive garment, which gave him almost the feeling of a human body, bore it to the hall and arranged it with care, pleasantly aware of the perfume it exhaled. He returned eagerly, conscious of the instantaneous impression her smile had made on him as she turned to thank him, a look that had challenged and aroused him. She was still chatting gaily, surrounded by the three men, and he was forced to occupy himself with Mrs. Bloodgood. His eyes, however, remained on the young girl, who was listening with unaffected pleasure to the compliments of her male audience. Something in the chivalry of the younger man revolted at the spectacle of the sophisticated Garraboy and the worldly appetites in the eyes of Cheever and Bloodgood. He felt almost an uneasy sense of her peril, which was in effect an instinctive emotion of jealousy, and, profiting by the moment in which Mrs. Bloodgood turned to Miss Lille, he slipped to Miss Charters’ side and contrived to isolate her.
The studio was now filled with chatter. Mrs. Kildair passed from group to group, animating it with a word or two. With the exception of Teddy Beecher and Nan Charters, in the several groups there was but one question—the events of the day in the financial world and the probable outcome of the secret conference at Gunther’s.
Every one watched the clock, awaiting the last arrival with an impatience that was too truly founded on the safety of their personal fortunes to be concealed.
“The conference ended at six-thirty,” said Maud Lille to Bloodgood and Cheever; “Majendie left for his house immediately after. I had it from the city editor on the telephone.”
“Was any statement given out?” said Cheever, who put one finger to his lip, as he did when a little nervous.
“None.”
“If he goes under, it means the bottom out of the market,” said Cheever, fixing his owlish stare on Bloodgood’s smug face.
“Are you long?” asked Bloodgood, turning on him with curiosity.
“A thousand shares,” answered Cheever, but in a tone that carried no conviction.
“He won’t come,” said Maud Lille obstinately.
“If he does,” said Cheever slowly, “he’s pulled through and the market ought to go up.” And a second time his finger jerked up to his lips, with the gesture of the stutterer.
“He won’t come,” repeated Maud Lille.
Bloodgood gave her a short look, trying to fathom the reason of her belief, a question he did not care to put before Cheever.
At this moment Majendie appeared at the entrance of the studio. The conversation, which had been mounting in nervous staccatos, fell with the hollowness that one sometimes feels in the air before the first crash of a storm. By an uncontrollable impulse, each turned, eager to read in the first indication some clue to his personal fate.
The last arrival had opened the outer door unheard, and, profiting by the commotion, had removed his overcoat and hat in the anteroom.
When the rest of the party perceived him, Majendie was standing erect and smiling under the Turkish lamp that, hanging from the balcony, cast a mellow light on his genial, aristocratic forehead. In every detail, from the ruddy, delicately veined cheeks and white mustache to the slight, finely shaped figure at ease in the evening coat that fitted him as a woman’s ball gown, he radiated the patrician, but the patrician of urbanity, tact, and generous impulses.
“My dear hostess,” he said at once, bending over Mrs. Kildair’s hand with a little extra formality, “a thousand excuses for keeping you and your guests waiting. But just at present there are quite a number of persons who seem to be determined to keep me from my engagements. Am I forgiven?”
“Yes,” she answered, with a sudden feeling of admiration for the air of absolute good humor with which he pronounced these words, mystifying though they were to her sense of divination.
“I think I know every one,” he said, glancing around without a trace of emotion at Bloodgood and Cheever, whose presence could not have failed to be distasteful. “You are very good to be so lenient, and I will accept whatever penance you impose. Are we going to have one of those delightful chafing-dish suppers that only you know how to provide?”
“What pride!” she murmured to herself, as he passed over to Miss Charters with a compliment that made her and Beecher break out laughing.
Up to the moment, the group had found not the slightest indication of the probable outcome of the afternoon’s conference. If anything, there was in his carriage a quiet exhilaration. But the moment was approaching when he must come face to face with Mrs. Bloodgood, who, either in order to gain time for the self-control that seemed almost beyond her, or that she might draw him into more immediate converse, had withdrawn so as to be the last he should greet. Majendie perceived instantly the imprudence of the maneuver, and by a word addressed to Mrs. Kildair, who followed at his side, contrived to bring himself to the farther side of the group, of which little Mrs. Cheever and Garraboy were the other two.
“I make my excuses to the ladies first,” he said, with a nod to Garraboy, whom he thus was enabled to pass. He offered his hand to Mrs. Bloodgood, saying: “Grant me absolution, and I promise to do everything I can to make you as gay as I feel now.”
Elise Bloodgood took his hand, glancing into his face with a startled glance, and immediately withdrew, murmuring something inaudible.
Mrs. Kildair, who with everyone had been listening to his words for the double meaning that seemed to be conveyed, stepped in front of Mrs. Bloodgood to cover her too evident agitation.
“Elise,” she said sharply, pressing her hand, “get hold of yourself. You must! Everything is all right. Didn’t you understand him?”
“Ah, if he were going to die tomorrow he would never tell me,” said Mrs. Bloodgood, pressing her handkerchief against her lips. “Nothing will ever break through his pride.”
“But he told you in so many words,” said Mrs. Kildair—who, however, didn’t believe what she said.
“He told me nothing—nothing!”
“You must control yourself,” said Mrs. Kildair, alarmed at her emotion.
“What do I care?”
“But you must! Listen. When I go into the dining-room don’t follow me. I will contrive to take your husband with me. Profit by the chance. Besides, you are in no state to judge. Does Bernard look like a man who has just been told he is ruined? Come, a little courage.”
She left her and, stepping into her bedroom, donned a Watteau-like cooking-apron, and, slipping her rings from her fingers, fixed the three on her pin-cushion with a hatpin. From the mirror in which she surveyed herself she could see the interior of the studio—Nan Charters’ laughing face above the piano, where she was running off a succession of topical songs, surrounded by a chorus of men, while Beecher, at her side, solicitously turned the pages.
“Teddy seems quite taken,” she thought. But the tensity of the drama drove from her all other considerations. Completely mystified by Majendie’s manner, she was studying the moment when she could throw him together with Elise Bloodgood, convinced that from the woman she would learn what the man concealed.
“Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful,” said the deep voice of Maud Lille, who, with Garraboy and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.
“I never saw the ruby before,” said Mrs. Cheever in a nervous voice. “My dear, you are the most mysterious woman in the world. Think of having a ring like that, and never wearing it!”
“It is a wonderful stone,” said Mrs. Kildair, touching with her thin fingers the ring that lay uppermost.
“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes fastened on it with an uncontrollable fascination.
Mrs. Cheever, her lips parted, her black eyes wide with eagerness, leaned over. She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on the ruby, withdrawing them as though the contact had burned them, while on either cheek little spots of red excitement showed.
“It must be very valuable,” she said, her breath catching slightly.
Garraboy, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.
“Yes, it is valuable—very much so,” said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down. Then she went to the door that led into the studio, and clapped her hands:
“Attention, everybody! Beecher and Garraboy are the chefs. Each one must choose his scullery-maid. Mr. Majendie is to make the punch. Everyone else is butler and waitress. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?”
“Good heavens, no!” said Mrs. Cheever, delicately recoiling.
“Well, there are no onions to peel,” said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. “All you have to do is to carry dishes or make the toast—on to the kitchen!”
“Miss Charters, you are engaged at any salary you may name,” said Beecher, forestalling Garraboy, who was coming forward.
“But I shall drop every dish,” said Nan Charters, rising from the piano. “I don’t know anything about cooking.”
“Splendid! Then you’ll make no mistakes.”
He installed her at one end of the table, and went off for the chafing-dish. When he returned, gingerly balancing it on a silver platter, Garraboy, profiting by his absence, was seated beside Nan Charters, speaking in a purposely low voice. She was listening, perfectly composed, looking straight before her with a tolerant, uninterested smile.
If women often can conceal their true natures from women, men seldom deceive one another. There was a fixity in Garraboy’s glance which Beecher understood and hotly resented. But at the moment when, setting the tray on the table, he was meditating some ill-advised remark, Mrs. Cheever, passing by, said with ill-concealed impatience in her thin, hurried voice:
“Mr. Garraboy, I am sorry for you, but I have been assigned as your assistant, and I should like to know what I am to do.”
Garraboy rose immediately, bowed with perfect suavity, and rejoined Mrs. Cheever, who said to him something that the others did not hear, but at which they saw him shrug his shoulders.
“Well, what are we going to make?” said Nan Charters, with the enjoyment that this exhibition of feminine jealousy had brought still in her eyes.
“I don’t like Garraboy,” said Beecher directly.
“Why not?” she said, smiling a little, and raising her eyebrows as though interrogating a child.
“Because I like you,” he answered abruptly.
Accustomed to contend with men, she was surprised by the genuineness of his remark, which was inspired by a sentiment deeper than jealousy. She looked at him again with that sudden second estimate which is vital.
“He is not difficult to handle,” she said carelessly, unaware of the touch of intimacy which her reply permitted.
“I don’t like him,” he said obstinately, “and I don’t like his crowd—the crowd that is here to-night. They’re like a pack of wolves. What the deuce does Rita see in them?”
“Mrs. Kildair has generally, I should say, a very good reason for whom she invites,” she said carelessly.
“But these Cheevers—they’re impossible. How the deuce do they live?”
“I thought Mr. Majendie very charming.”
“Oh, Majendie—yes, I except him,” he said enthusiastically. “He’s a gentleman.”
“That counts a good deal with you?” she said, with a touch of raillery.
“It does. I think a gentleman is almost the rarest thing you meet with today,” he said, holding his ground, “a gentleman in the heart. I know only four or five.”
“Yes, you are right,” she said, changing her tone. She looked at him a third time, at the honest, boyish loyalty so plainly written on his face, and said: “You haven’t gone out much here?”
“No; I’m just back from knocking around the world, hunting in Africa and all that sort of uselessness.”
“Come and tell me about it sometime.
“May I?”
She laughed at his impetuousness, and pointed to the contents of the chafing-dish, which had been simmering neglected; but more than once during the operation her glance returned to the eager, earnest face.
Meanwhile, Garraboy, at the other end of the table, assisted by Mrs. Cheever and Maud Lille, was busy with a lobster à la Newburg. Mrs. Kildair, having finished in the kitchen, had entered the dining-room, where she established a sort of provisional serving-table. She called to her side Cheever and Bloodgood, and, under the pretext of arranging the dishes from the china-closet, kept them isolated. At this moment Elise Bloodgood approached Majendie, who, at the rear end of the studio, was occupied with the brewing of a punch. Natural as was the movement, it was instantly perceived by the four or five persons vitally interested. A moment afterward Mrs. Bloodgood passed into the bedroom; but there was in her carriage a triumph that she did not care to conceal.
“He’s won out,” thought Bloodgood.
“The shorts will be caught,” thought Cheever. “The devil! I must cover.”
“Has he lied to her?” said Mrs. Kildair to herself. “If everything is all right, why should he conceal it from any one?”
She went across the room, stopping at the punch-table.
“Have you everything you need?” she asked.
“Everything, thank you,” Majendie answered gently; but there was in his voice a tired note, as if some effort had suddenly exhausted him.
“I understood what you meant,” she said, looking at him not without a little pity—an emotion which was rare with her. “Let me congratulate you on the result of this afternoon.”
“Thank you very much for your congratulations,” he said quietly, taking her hand. “If you knew, you will understand why I was kept so late.”
As he bowed, the front of his jacket opening a little, she saw or fancied she saw in the inner pocket a strip of green, slightly protruding. She left him, still unconvinced, and turned to the company.
“Everything ready, Teddy? All right. Every one sit down. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Bloodgood are appointed butlers—because real work will do them good. Sit down, sit down. I’ll be back in a minute.”
As she turned to her bedroom, there came a strong ring, twice repeated. She paused, astonished.
“Who can that be?” she thought, frowning, and directing her steps toward the antechamber. “No one is allowed to come up. It must be a telegram.”
She opened the door, and Slade entered.
“I came right up,” he said directly, “because I had no success on the telephone. You rather excited my curiosity this afternoon. Please invite me to your party.”
The first moment of irritation was succeeded, on her part, by the feeling of elation. The impulse that had brought Slade so unexpectedly there was a feeling of jealousy, in which Beecher and Majendie were confusedly mixed.
“He wishes to watch me with his own eyes,” she said triumphantly. “Very well; he shall be well punished.”
Slade’s arrival produced a moment of profound astonishment. Bloodgood and Maud Lille exchanged quick glances, believing the meeting between Majendie and Slade had been premeditated. Garraboy plucked Cheever nervously by the sleeve, while Majendie, as if realizing that he was dealing with an antagonist of a different caliber, rose with a little nervous inflation of the chest. Rapid as had been the interim in the antechamber, Mrs. Kildair had had time to say:
“Majendie is here. Do you know what happened this afternoon?”
“I do,” said Slade, with malicious enjoyment, and he added: “Do you?”
“Yes,” she replied, convinced, likewise, of the falsity of his statement. Then aloud she added: “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Slade, an impromptu guest.”
She passed with him about the table, introducing him where it was necessary. Slade and Majendie did not offer hands; each bowed with a quiet, measured politeness. On the contrary, when Beecher was reached, the older man grasped the hand of the younger, and held it a moment with a grip that, despite Beecher’s own strength, made him wince.
“Teddy, be a good boy and place Mr. Slade somewhere,” she said, resting her hand purposely on the young man’s shoulder. “I’ll take off my apron and be back immediately.”
She stopped near Majendie, who had returned to the punch-table for an extra glass, and, seeing that her movements were followed by Slade, said:
“Bernard, believe me, I did not plan it. I had no idea he was coming.”
“It makes not the slightest difference,” he said instantly. “Mr. Slade and I have no quarrel. Please don’t worry about me.”
“You’re an awfully good sort,” she said abruptly.
“That is high praise from you,” he said, with a little critical smile which showed he was not entirely the dupe of her maneuvers.
She went into her bedroom, and, divesting herself of her apron, hung it in the closet. Then, going to her dressing-table, she drew the hatpin from the pin-cushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers. All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand. Only two rings were there. The third one—the ring with the ruby—was gone!