“You do love your mother, don’t you?” he smiled significantly. “Maybe you’ll learn to love Van a little, too. It would be—very wise.”
It was half past four o’clock when the tireless debutantes were willing to call it a night. Sally braved the thing out, but her face was wan as she listened to the last compliments on the success of the party which had officially launched her into the circles of society to which her mother belonged by the divine right of inheritance and immense wealth.
“We’ll talk it all over tomorrow, sweetheart,” Enid said pityingly. “You run along to bed now. I’ve got to give a few instructions to Randall. And you’d better stay in bed all day, or until tea time anyway. You were marvelous tonight, darling. So beautiful, so sweet. These wild young flappers—but run along, daughter beloved. You look as if you might faint with fatigue. Have Ernestine bring you some hot milk.”
It was ridiculously easy for Sally to slip out of the house, using the servants’ entrance, as Van Horne had suggested. She found him waiting for her and submitted wearily to being led to where his car was parked, a block away.
“What do you want, Van?” she asked abruptly, when the car turned into Central Park from Fifth Avenue at Eighty-fourth street, the wheels crunching the glazed crust of new snow.
“To talk with you and hold your hand and possibly kiss you—oh, very possibly!” Van Horne laughed at her, reaching for her hand.
“What did you mean when you said it would be ‘very wise’ for me to love you a little?” she persisted, too tired to be diplomatic. But of course she knew. He held her mother’s security and happiness in the hollow of his hand. That he could destroy her own social career if he wished did not occur to her, for she had not yet learned to care about it, to prize it. But Enid must be protected at all costs.
“I think you know,” Van Horne shrugged. “But why put it into words? Some things are much nicer unsaid, if they are distinctly understood. Now—will you kiss me, Sally? I’ve waited a long time, sweet child, and I’m naturally not a patient man.”
“Not tonight,” Sally said in a low, flat voice, shrinking into her own corner of the seat. “Please turn at One Hundred and Tenth street and take me back home, Van. I’m utterly tired.”
Van obeyed cheerfully, exultant over her indirect promise. Sally was creeping exhaustedly up the stairs to her room, her mother, still dressed in her formal ball gown, came hurrying frantically down to meet her.