She nodded gayly. "Pretty good for a plain business man," said she.
Another moment and she was in the cab and away, he standing at the curb watching with an expression that made the two remaining cabmen grin and wink at each other by the light of the street lamp.
XXV
TWO WOMEN INTERVENE
"If I could find some way of detaching Trafford from Atwater," Armstrong had said to her as he was explaining. "But," he had added, "that's hopeless. He's more afraid of Atwater than of anybody or anything on earth—and well he may be." Neva seized upon the chance remark, without saying anything to him. She knew the Traffords well, knew therefore that there was one person of whom his fear was greater than of Atwater, and whose influence over him was absolute. Early the following morning she called the Traffords on the telephone. Mrs. Trafford was in the country, she learned, but would be home in the afternoon. Neva left a message that she wished particularly to see her; at five o'clock she was shown into the truly palatial room in which Mrs. Trafford always had tea.
"Narcisse has just left," said Mrs. Trafford. "She's been rummaging for me in Letty Morris's rag bag—you know, my husband bought it. She has found a few things, but not much. Still, Letty wasn't cheated any worse than most people. The trash! The trash!"
Neva was too intent upon her purpose to think of her surroundings that day; but she had often before been moved to a variety of emotions, none of them approaching admiration or approval or even tolerance, by Mrs. Trafford's procession of halls and rooms in gilt and carving and brocade, by the preposterous paintings, the glaring proclamation from every wall and every floor and every ceiling of the alternately arid and atrocious taste of the fashionable architects and connoisseurs to whom Mrs. Trafford had trusted. As in all great houses, the beauties were incidental and isolated, deformed by the general effect of coarse appeal to barbaric love of the thing that is gaudy and looks costly.
"You aren't going to move into Letty's house?" said Neva absently. She was casting about for some not too abrupt beginning.
"Heavens, no!" protested Mrs. Trafford, in horror and indignation. "John bought it—some time ago. I don't know why." She laughed. "But I do know he wishes he hadn't now. He wouldn't tell me the price he paid. I suspect he found out that he had made a bad bargain as soon as it was too late. There's some mystery about his buying that house. I don't—" Mrs. Trafford broke off. Well as she knew Neva, and intimate and confidential though she was with her, despite Neva's reserve—indeed, perhaps because of it—still, she was careful about Trafford's business. And Neva and Letty were cousins—not intimates or especially friendly, but nevertheless blood relations. "I suppose he's ashamed of not having consulted me," she ended.
"How is Mr. Trafford?" asked Neva. "I haven't seen him for months. He must be working very hard?"