When Mr. Chadsey met the guest as they were coming in from the arbor, he simply stared at the name, not realizing that he had heard it mentioned before. A fair, somewhat faded woman, so well made up that she could still discount a few years. Her attire and her jewels betokened comfortable circumstances, indeed wealth, for besides some fine diamonds she had two splendid rubies.
Twice since he had been in California he had been startled by the name. Once by a young fellow of two or three and twenty, looking for a chance at clerking. The other had been a miserable, disreputable fellow, who had failed at mining and was likely through drunkenness to fail at everything else. He questioned him closely. The man had left a wife and family at Vincennes, and would be only too glad to get back to them. He had been born and raised in Indiana. So he had helped him on his way, praying that he might reach there. And here it had cropped up again. It sent a shiver through him.
He questioned the guest adroitly, carefully. She was proud of her husband and his successes. She had met him in New York; she thought him a native of that State.
Surely the David Westbury he knew could never have had all this good fortune. So he dismissed this case from his mind, and smiled over Laverne's new friend, who would be one of the transient guests of the heart.
Mr. Westbury sent word by a messenger that he would be detained longer than he expected. He hoped she found her quarters satisfactory, and that she would take all the entertainment she could. He had struck a new opening that would in all probability make a millionaire of him. When he returned they must go at once to London, and they might remain there for years, since it was one of the places she liked.
Yes, she did like it, and had made some very nice friends there. But—if she had a daughter like this girl to draw young men; she should always yearn for the young life that had never been hers, and a girl to dress beautifully, to take out driving in the "Row," to have one and another nod to her, to take her calling—that was the way mothers did in England, to give dainty parties for her, to let her tend stalls at fairs, to have her some day presented to the Queen, and at last to marry well. Her daughter might have such a fortune. David Westbury had been lucky in a good many things and he seldom made a mistake.
She dreamed this over and over again. She had never cared for babies or little children, and she had felt glad there had been no children to tie her to the old New Hampshire town, where she must then have spent her life. She had had so much more enjoyment, larger liberty, and oh, worlds more money. Travelling, hotels, meeting delightful people. But now her day was about over. If there was a young blossom growing up beside her to shed a charm around, to attract, to fill a house with gayety, so she could go through with it all again. Then lovers and marriage. She should want a pretty girl, one with a winsome manner. A little training would do wonders with this one, who was just the right age to be moulded into success.
Of course, her uncle would never give her up, and one could not coax her away. A man's journeying about would have no society advantages. Miss Holmes was very nice and sensible, but there were some old-maidish traits. She was rather narrow. She really pitied the girl's life between them. It would lose the exquisite flavor of enjoyment that by right belonged to youth.
Of course, all this was folly. But she did like the child so much. And she wanted a new adoration, which she believed she could win easily.