“I can arrange all that,” Jack said, in an off-hand way. Carmen's look of gratitude could hardly be distinguished from affection. “That's easy enough. We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn't altogether approve of me lately. It's rather nice for a fellow, Mrs. Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn't it?” asked Jack, in the tone of a bad boy.
“Yes. Between us all we will make a model of you. I am so glad now that I told you.”
Jack protested that it was nothing. Why shouldn't friends help each other? Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good deal about friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman. This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to say philosophic. Carmen was a great philosopher in it. She didn't know, but she believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one man friend. Jack rose to go.
“So soon?” And it did seem pathetically soon. She gave him her hand, and then by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to him in quite a business way.
“Mr. Delancy, don't you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking of. It will be all right. Trust me.”
He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and his gratitude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.
When he had gone, Carmen sat a long time by the fire reflecting. It would be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, as Henderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeter still to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endured a good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, and the sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who had ignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson only cared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actually brutal about it. He seemed to have only one passion. She herself liked money, but only for what it would bring. Henderson was like an old Pharaoh, who was bound to build the biggest pyramid ever built to his memory; he hated to waste a block. But what was the good of that when one had passed beyond the reach of envy?
Revolving these deep things in her mind, she went to her dressing-room and made an elaborate toilet for dinner. Yet it was elaborately simple. That sort needed more study than the other. She would like to be the Carmen of ten years ago in Henderson's eyes.
Her lord came home late, and did not dress for dinner. It was often so, and the omission was usually not allowed to pass by Carmen without notice, to which Henderson was sure to growl that he didn't care to be always on dress parade. Tonight Carmen was all graciousness and warmth. Henderson did not seem to notice it. He ate his dinner abstractedly, and responded only in monosyllables to her sweet attempts at conversation. The fact was that the day had been a perplexing one; he was engaged in one of his big fights, a scheme that aroused all his pugnacity and taxed all his resources. He would win—of course; he would smash everybody, but he would win. When he was in this mood Carmen felt that she was like a daisy in the path of a cyclone. In the first year of their marriage he used to consult her about all his schemes, and value her keen understanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust even her, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She was unruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by her subtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever the side was.
In the library she brought him his cigar, and lighted it. She saw that his coffee was just as he liked it. As she moved about, making things homelike, Henderson noticed that she was more Carmenish than he had seen her in a long time. The sweet ways and the simple toilet must be by intention. And he knew her so well. He began to be amused and softened. At length he said, in his ordinary tone, “Well, what is it?”