“We hardly hoped to find you bunched up and waiting for us like this,” Pape added with something of a flourish. “Saves sending for you.”
The matron straightened on the edge of her chair and, with a precise expression, inspected first him, then her niece. “You two spent the night together, I assume?”
“Most of it, auntie, at a spiritualistic seance in Central Park.”
Pape chuckled. “The most inspiring I ever attended.”
“Jane—and you the girl I counted on as so reliable! My Irene is steady by contrast. You pretend to go visiting friends and only let us know your whereabouts when you get arrested. One night in a police station-house and the next—I presume—at least, I hope, for all our sakes, that you thought to marry this—this young man before bringing him here.”
“Marry, mother—that brute?” Irene slithered from her seat on the arm of the chair recently vacated by the handsome real-estater. Throwing herself upon her cousin’s neck with a freshet of real tears, she wailed: “Oh, my poor dar-rling—our poor old Janie! No matter what your mistakes, you are more to be pitied than punished. Don’t lay your neck on the altar of matrimony for this outlaw. I am sure there’s a good man and true somewhere in the world for you, even though he does seem a long time showing up. Don’t be overcome by this Wild West stuff. I know full well that he has his fatal fascinations. I was once but a bird held in his snake-like spell, until my Harfy saved me from the high seas of his tyranny and the burning blast of his——”
“Enough, Rene. Loose me. You’ll drown me with brine if you don’t smother me first,” begged the object of her anxiety.
The more Jane struggled, however, the tighter did the bob-haired cousin cling.
“But, you poor thing, I know he’ll turn on you one day and beat you up! You saw how he treated my Harfy—a man and his superior in every way—how he rained blow after blow on his priceless pate. What wouldn’t he do to a weak woman in his power? Don’t you go and get desperate just because—Luck in love always seems to run my way, don’t you think so—or do you? Harfy was so nice-nice when he was coming to and so suppressed. I dote on suppression. Do you—or don’t you? He just gazed at me with all his soul when I asked the question I knew he was too used up to ask me. And we’re going to have the biggest church wedding of any girl in my set, with all the trimmings, just as soon as mother can manage it. Aren’t we, dar-rling?”
“It seems—that we are.”