“Don’t antagonize him, darling!” Enid had begged. “He can ruin us, ruin us! Be nice to him, Sally! If—if he was in love with you during those awful carnival days, maybe—” She had hesitated, ashamed to put her hope into words. “Van is really a rather wonderful man, you know, darling. One of the most eligible bachelors in New York society. Old family, no mother or father to dictate to him, a tremendous fortune. Of course, he’s cynical and blase, and rather more experienced than I’d like, but—just be nice to him, darling. Maybe—”
That shamefaced “maybe” of Enid’s had kept thrusting itself upon Sally’s rebellious attention ever since. Enid, more frightened of Van’s power over her than she would admit, even to Sally, threw the two together on every possible occasion. After Grant Proctor had retreated from the field, smarting under his refusal by Sally, Enid had almost feverishly concentrated on Van Horne. Sally had stubbornly insisted to her mother that she would not marry any man whom she could not tell the truth about her illegitimacy, and Enid had just as stubbornly refused to consider the possibility of Sally’s telling.
“If Van really knows,” she had told Sally in desperation, “that is one too many. You could not possibly harm any man by marrying him without telling. You’re our daughter now—the legally adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Courtney Barr. That is all that matters.”
“What matters to me,” Sally had insisted wearily, “is that no man that you would like for me to marry would have me if he knew. I can’t cheat. Of course I don’t have to marry.”
“Of course not,” Enid had agreed with assumed gayety. “But since Van does know—Of course, since he already knows, if you married him it would be as much to his interest to forget it and protect me—us—as it is ours. But I want you to be happy, darling.”
Sally, her little round chin supported on her laced fingers, her eyes brooding upon the dancer whom she did not see, reflected with an unchildlike bitterness that there was no question now of her being happy. Happiness lay behind her; she had almost grasped it, had been “half-married” to a man she loved. David! His name flashed through her heart like the thrust of a red-hot lancet.
“Dance, Sally? Or do you prefer to go on dreaming?” Van Horne’s low, teasing voice interrupted her bitter reverie.
She made a sudden resolution, rose with sprightly vivacity from her chair, flung a sparkling glance to her mother whose beautiful face was a little pinched with the strain under which she had lived these last few weeks. “Dance, of course. Van!” she cried, wrinkling her nose at him with a provocative moue. “I was dreaming about you! Aren’t you flattered?”
She saw her mother’s pinched face flush and bloom with hope, caught an austere but approving smile from Courtney Barr, with whom she had not yet reached the intimacy that should exist between a father and a daughter, even an adopted daughter. If she could make them so happy by marrying Arthur Van Horne, why let her own feelings prevent? If she couldn’t have David, what difference did it make whom she married? And if she married Van Horne the only menace to her mother’s reputation would be removed.
“You adorable little thing!” Van Horne whispered, as he swept her out upon the crowded dance floor. “So you were dreaming about me? Pleasant dreams, little Princess Lalla?” His ardent, dark face was bending close, his black eyes free of mockery but lit by a fire that repelled her.