“Suit yourself, my dear,” he said, “but I can’t see——”
“Nor I!” Elinor leaped lightly into the machine. “What’s the use of good-bys? I’ve had enough of scenes—forever.”
And she turned her face resolutely toward the new life.
Geraldine DeLacy was kept waiting for a short time, but when she saw Hugh Benton’s tall familiar figure coming toward her, her mood of pettishness passed as though a hand had wiped out the lines from her face, and it was a smiling eager countenance with which she greeted him as he bent over her hand a moment before taking the chair opposite her in their favorite little corner in the downtown café. Geraldine DeLacy was a careful player. She knew there was yet much to lose by a false move, and she prided herself that never yet had anyone called to her, “Checkmate!” There was the Benton money, for instance. Something must be devised—It would never do to have Marjorie Benton come out victor there, and she knew quite well through her familiarity with the divorce proceedings that were already under way in less than two weeks after Hugh had gained Marjorie’s permission to start them, that Hugh intended to live up to the letter of his promise to his wife, given that night he had forced her hand.
So it was with no suggestion either of her discontent in this matter, nor of the bad temper that had spent itself over having been kept waiting that the young widow spoke softly to the man who apologized.
“Of course, it was long waiting, Hugh, dear,” she pouted prettily. “But it’s always an age if I have to wait for you a moment! And to think before I knew you I never thought I could miss anyone in the world!”
“I knew you would understand, little one,” he smiled tenderly, “you always do! But I was kept unconscionably late to-day for several reasons. First, Elinor—I told you I had installed her at the Alliston with me, did I not?” Geraldine nodded, but as she bent over her plate of oysters picking at them with the tiny fork, Hugh Benton could not see the annoyance in the dropped eyes. “Then,” he went on, “just as I was ready to leave the office, one of those new lawyers of mine dropped in. I’ll say I’m going to have trouble making them understand that they must make appointments like other people,—Hammond always understood such things so well—and they had a lot of questions to ask about that settlement of mine——”
Mrs. DeLacy showed signs of quickening interest, but her eyes were still upon her plate as she thought best how to inject some of her own ideas into the man’s reasoning.
“It’s all so maddening,” Hugh went on, “to be tied up in this manner over money! Here all I want in the world is you,—and you want me, I’m sure, little one,” Geraldine lifted her eyes to flash him a dazzling smile of happiness and understanding, “and they keep us——”
Geraldine DeLacy laid down her fork and leaned across the table toward her companion, gazing at him thoughtfully and consideringly, as though there were something vital she wished to say, but wanted to be sure of her ground. Hugh smiled tenderly.