“I was with the Colin Jeffries’ until recently,” she went on, in the same cool tone and not even troubling to explain her revelation. Indeed, it was not like a personal revelation. She seemed to Stacey to be merely meditating aloud—and about a third person. “With the Colin Jeffries’—as governess to their children.”
Stacey smiled.
“An impossible house,” she continued imperturbably. “Mrs. Jeffries is the kind of woman who wants to dig into every one’s mind and pull out the weeds and plant it with proper vegetables—cabbages and such—in rows. And Mr. Jeffries is tiresomely lecherous. He was always trying to get into my bedroom. Once he hid in my bath.”
Stacey laughed. “I didn’t know that, of course,” he said, “but I might have guessed it. Any such public institution as Colin Jeffries must have to take it out privately somehow. I can see why you went away. Still I think you might have found something a little better than Ames Price.”
“Oh,” she explained simply, “I didn’t take him on at once. I had an idea that there might be something more interesting in a disorderly life than an orderly one. Silly, wasn’t it? One’s as dull as the other. Ames is really as good a solution as any. He is generous with money and unperturbing.”
Stacey frowned. “That reminds me,” he said. “We’ll have to go back to-day. I’m about at the end of my money and I have almost none in the bank.”
She expressed no surprise at this, even by a look, though she must have known that he was supposed to be rich. But a shadow of regret did cross her face. She gazed at him, and he at her.
“Come here!” she said finally.
He obeyed. His eyes caressed her slim form somberly. “Your body is as strange as your face!” he muttered.
She shivered, set her teeth, and stared at him in a fury of desire.