Matters were not going ahead to suit the liking of Mary. Aunt Caroline was displaying mild symptoms of impatience because the ship that represented Bill's society career still hung on the launching ways. Bill himself would pay no attention to the business of getting it off. He was never at home at night and it seemed to Mary that he slept very late in the mornings. Pete Stearns was also missing from the household nearly every time that Bill disappeared. He was probably taking covert advantage of his employer's absences, Mary thought.
Thus she was left very much to her own devices, save for occasions when she found it advisable to consult Aunt Caroline. In the case of the latter, Mary observed a threatening tendency to revert to the launching plans that had been conceived by Pete. Whenever she found opportunity she tried to impress upon Bill the fact that unless he helped to devise something else he would find himself forced to follow the charitable and religious route into society. But he waved all that aside in the most optimistic fashion.
"You take care of it," he said. "You're against it yourself; I'm counting on you."
The valet still puzzled Mary. He had an annoying way of appearing when Bill was not around, always ostensibly looking for Bill and always lingering when he did not find him. She could not deny that he interested her; he possessed an element of the mysterious, whereas Bill was as transparent as air. It was not easy to establish the precise status of Pete; Aunt Caroline contributed to that difficulty by lending him a willing ear on any subject to which he chose to devote his fluent tongue. His rank was that of a domestic servant; he even ate with the servants, which was something of which he bitterly complained to Mary. She could not help feeling that there was some merit in the complaint.
Yet she could not and would not accept him on a plane of social equality, although she did not wish to appear snobbish. The relative values of their positions in the household must be preserved, if only for the sake of discipline. She would not have minded an occasional chat with her employer's valet if he did not constantly convey the idea that he was about to step out of his character. He never actually presumed upon her friendliness, but he always made her feel that he was about to presume.
She had a sense of something like espionage whenever Pete was about, coupled with an idea that he viewed her work with suspicion and even derision. Certainly the impression that he made upon Mary was quite different from that upon Aunt Caroline. He never talked theology to Mary, although to Aunt Caroline he would discourse upon it until the dear old lady actually became sleepy.
As for affairs between Bill and Pete, there had been a truce ever since the former threatened to throw his valet out of the house by way of the skylight if he dared to discuss any more social projects with Aunt Caroline. They did very well together so long as it was not necessary for them to play the parts of master and man for the benefit of the household; it was on those occasions that the ever-lurking devil within Pete Stearns took charge of his actions and speech. Outside of the house, of course, all barriers between them were down—and they were outside a great deal.
It was late in the evening of a difficult and dissatisfying day that Mary sat alone in the library, quite vainly trying to scheme something practical for the social launching of Bill. The only thing that cheered her was a faint hope that he would bring home an idea of his own, for he had told her that he was to spend the evening at a private and very exclusive affair. Aunt Caroline had gone to bed early, as usual, and even the valet had disappeared.
"I do hope I'll be able to do something very soon," mused Mary, frowning at a book she had been trying to read. "Poor Nell! She's too sick to help, and even in her bright moments she doesn't seem to want to talk about it. I never dreamed it could be so difficult. It's not fair, either. I came here to be a secretary and they're trying to make me a manager. And he simply won't be managed and—and I don't know how to manage him, even if he would."
"Ps-s-s-st!"