It was past ten o'clock when Louise, in Laura's car, which had been waiting at the ferry, reached the house on the Drive, Laura having been dropped at her apartment. The sheer happiness of the day still absorbed her. Up to the moment when the car pulled up at the curb she had been going over and over, since parting with Blythe and Laura, the incidents of the day that had made it such an oasis of happiness.
But it all disappeared like a suddenly-vanishing mirage when, upon stepping to the pavement, she saw Langdon Jesse's car drawn up at the curb.
CHAPTER VII
Jesse's car looming suddenly upon her, instantly dissolved Louise's happy absorption and aroused within her the foreboding that she was upon the threshold of something sinister; and the premonition caused her to become physically and mentally tense as she ascended the steps.
The impact of the hall's stream of light slightly blinded and confused her as she entered; but she very soon discerned Jesse and Judd standing before the wide, brassy fireplace. Both were in shaggy automobile coats and plainly were about to leave the house. Judd, his burnished bald pate mottledly rosy from the heat of the blazing logs, was standing with his back to the fire, his hands thrust in the greatcoat pockets, his heavy under-shot jaw working upon an imaginary cud. Jesse, towering over the other man, but his own increasing over-bulkiness made more manifest by his bulging coat of fur, was the first to see Louise, who, with an inclination of the head, was for passing them to gain the stairs. Neither Jesse nor Judd intended that this should be. The two had dined together. The blitheness of their humor, therefore, contained also a seasoning of carelessness.
Without the least movement of his grotesquely-paunched body, Judd turned his head sidewise and viewed Louise quizzically through his sharp, red-rimmed, oddly small eyes.
"Evening—er—daughter," he said to her in an experimental but sufficiently matter-of-fact tone.
The greeting sounded so incredible that Louise, coming to a sudden halt, rested her hands on the back of a chair and stared curiously at him without a word. She felt very cold, in spite of the excessive heat of the hall; but she was amazed quite beyond the power of speech. While thus she stood, staring puzzledly at Judd, Jesse faced her, and, bringing his heels together with a click, made her a low bow accompanied by a sweeping cross-wise gesture with his cap of fur. It is a dangerous thing for a man to attempt the grand manner unless he is very sure of his practice or at least of the indulgence of his gallery. Louise, startled as she was, could not fail to notice the inadequacy of his attempt.
"Glad I haven't missed you, after all, Lou—Miss Treharne," said Jesse, catching himself before he had quite finished addressing her by her first name. His tone was grossly familiar; and Louise, merely glancing at him, saw that the question that was always in his eyes when he looked at her now was made more searching and persistent by his potations. "I've been dallying a-purpose. I came to offer you the use of my box for 'Pelleas and Melisande'—it's being done at the Manhattan tonight for the first time here, of course you know. They're repeating it Friday night, though. Mary Garden's a dream in it, they say—she's a dream in any old thing—or hardly anything, when it comes to that," and he laughed boldly at the suggestiveness of the remark. "The box is yours for Friday night. May I hope to join——"