VI.
Adventuress! How that odious word rang in his ears as he entered the room where the sweet primrose face was still in its corner of the sofa. He swore he would never write to, nor speak to, Hunnewell Hollis again. He had done with him forever. Yet, had he heard the rustle of her dress? It gave him a slightly disagreeable sensation to think that it were possible. Elvira Price apparently had not moved from her seat. She was in the same pretty attitude in which he had left her, leaning back, easily, against the corner of the sofa, her hands crossed in her lap. As he entered it seemed to him that she was studying his face.
“I was so anxious about aunt,” she said. “I went out to the stairs thinking I heard her come in. Do you know, it isn’t the Belt Line only; she goes to a mission—a boy’s mission. She has taken the greatest interest in it; all the teachers have gone away for the summer. It is in an out-of-the-way part of the city, and it worries me.”
Archibald hesitated a moment, then he said:
“Did you hear the row with my cousin? He was very impertinent; but all Bostonians are impertinent.”
The name Bostonian seemed to give her a slight sensation.
“You have been in Boston?” he asked.
“N—yes, and I, too, found Bostonians impertinent.” She gave him an appealing glance; then she added, after a pause, “I find New York quite different.”
Miss Perkins came in shortly after, much fatigued, and Archibald after dinner went over to the club, where he fell in with Hunnewell Hollis again, in spite of the fact that he did his best to avoid him. Hunnewell had found his yachting friends, and they had had a very good dinner. They were all very talkative—Somers, Billy Nahant, and Jack Chadwick. They were in flannel suits and yachting caps, and each was bronzed and sunburned to a fine copper hue.
“What is the name of the people who have taken your house?” asked Hunnewell, bluntly, after he had introduced Archibald to his friends.
“Miss Perkins and her niece, Miss Elvira Price,” replied Archibald, coldly.
Instantly Billy Nahant pricked up his ears. “Why,” he said, “isn’t she an actress? Didn’t she play in Boston last winter?”
“Who?” asked Archibald.
“Why, Elvira Price. She made quite a hit, I believe—her début too—at the Boston Theatre. She played to crowded houses exactly two weeks; at the end of that time, to everyone’s surprise, she went home to Vermont, whence she came, and she calmly gave up the stage forever!”
Archibald’s face was a study.
“Did you know you were letting your mother’s house to actresses?” asked Hollis, with a sneer.
“Miss Price is probably a different person from the one to whom Mr. Nahant has reference,” said Archibald, coldly.
“I remember the girl,” said Jack Chadwick. “She was very young and beautiful, and fitted her part admirably. She made an excellent ingénue. She held herself well—not at all gushing, don’t you know—but poetic, spirituelle. She played in ‘A Scrap of Paper’—some picked-up company with her. She carried the play very well. I have often wondered what became of her.”
“So this is the creature who has rented your house, and whom you dined with to-night,” sneered Hollis; “an ingénue, indeed!”
“Miss Price is a lady—not a ‘creature,’” said Archibald, haughtily. “As far as I have seen, she can only honor our house by remaining under its roof.” And Archibald bowed stiffly, and took his leave in the midst of an embarrassed silence.