She was restless; she could not be still. She was out every day. More than once in her limousine she caught sight of him on the sidewalk. She had fancied, she had feared he might not speak, but he raised his hat with a grave dignity and a look wholly devoid of consciousness, and she could hang no thread of a theory on the incident. Once he chanced to be strolling with Hildegarde Dean, and with the recollection of her fresh, smiling, girlish face Paula went home in a rage, as if she had received some bitter affront, as if her tenure on his affections precluded his exchange of a word with any other woman, the tender of a casual courtesy. Then it was that she projected the purchase of the necklace. If he should—but oh, he could not! That girl should not wear the gorgeous gewgaw, which she herself had rescued at such pains and risk, and restored to his possession. He was as poor as poverty—she had adopted her husband’s habit of scorn of small means—and she would buy it secretly through an agent, at any price.
When the answer came from the jeweler she was stunned. It was reserved as a bridal gift, quotha. She had crystallized the very thought she had sought to preclude. The mischance tamed her. She caught her breath and took counsel with sober conservatism. She must be wary; she must make no false move. Indeed, she told herself she must be utterly quiescent; she must, in prudence, in self-respect, make no move at all. Then by degrees her persistent hopefulness, her vehement determination, were reasserted. She argued that no immediate bridal was foreshadowed, nor with whom. She herself might wear these jewels,—which she had discovered and restored,—on a day that would be like a first bridal, for her wedding seemed to her now as a sacrifice to Moloch.
Some time later she chanced, while driving, to meet Hildegarde, walking alone. Paula joyously signaled to her and ordered the limousine to be drawn up to the curb. “Come with me,” she said, genially, “let’s have a long drive and a good talk. I was just thinking of you!”
She looked most attractive as she smiled at the girl. Her ermine furs, including the toque—for she had cast aside even the perfunctory weeds she had worn—added an especial richness and daintiness to a wintry toilette of black, adhering to the convention of second mourning, it being now almost a year since Floyd-Rosney had startled the world by his manner of quitting it. Her eyes were bright and kindly, her cheek delicately flushed. She had an increased authority or autocracy in her manner, which might have come about from unrestrained control of her fortune and her actions, but which seemed to the girl in some sort coercive. Hildegarde felt that she could scarcely have refused if she would, yet indeed she did not wish to decline, and soon they were skimming along the smooth curves of the speedway in the driving park, the river, though lower than at this season last year, glimpsed in burnished silver now and again through the trees.
“I have a good scheme for you and me, Hildegarde,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and as the two sat together she slipped one hand into Hildegarde’s chinchilla muff to give her little gloved fingers an affectionate pressure. “I want you to go with me as my guest to New Orleans for Mardi Gras,—doesn’t Lent come early this year? The yacht is quite ready and we will make a list of just a few friends for company. And afterward to my house on Saint Simon’s Island.”
“Oh, ideal,” cried Hildegarde joyously. “I shall be delighted to go.”
“I think Saint Simon’s Island is the choice location for the penitential season,” said Paula flippantly,—“savors least of sackcloth and ashes.”
Hildegarde’s face fell.
“Oh, did I tell you,” the quick Paula broke off suddenly, “that as a Lenten offering I am going to furnish a room and endow a bed in the new Charity Hospital?”
“Oh, how lovely,” cried Hildegarde, radiant once more.