Fragrant from her bath, Catherine was sitting before a pier glass in her dressing room leisurely and, it would seem regretfully, covering her exquisite body with undergarments of rather sleazy texture. The fresh-opened box of bon-bons which stood on a nearby tabourette she urged upon Dolores with her comments.
“John Cabot’s character is an open book—in cipher,” she declared. “I have noticed, my dear, that you appear to be just a bit in awe of him. It seems too bad when you will be thrown so much together over Jack. Perhaps if I give you the key to him you will feel more comfortable in his presence. He is not nearly so cold or stern as he acts. Really, he used to be quite ardent before—— Well, you know, before we got to know each other so thoroughly. I used to think him the strongest man I’d ever met.”
Dolores resented the insinuation. “But isn’t he still stronger, now that he has learned to control his feelings? And perhaps he wouldn’t wish people to be given what you call the key to him.”
But Catherine was not listening, as told by the opera air she hummed. She had become intent over an open drawerful of lingerie, some pieces simple, some elaborate as the sweat-shop set bought that day at Seff’s. With the selection of a rather plain Philippine linen for that day’s wear, her interest returned to the ever engrossing subject of herself.
“Queer, isn’t it, how one’s early habits will cling? Have you heard that I wasn’t always rich? I haven’t a dollar except what Mr. Cabot has settled on me. My father had plenty to start with, but he squandered it all on ‘old masters’ that turned out to be neither masters nor old. I try to forget the humiliations of those days, but every now and then am reminded by little things—like, for instance, this.”
At the puzzled look with which Dolores’ eyes met the emergence of her own from the neck scallops of the sheer envelope, she expanded:
“I never wear my best clothes on a stormy day. Isn’t that too funny, when I don’t need to think of the weather? I’m interested in noting my own characteristics quite as much as I would be those of another person. Dr. Shayle says that I have the introspective faculty to a marked degree. I appreciate the compliment from him.”
“He seems to see,” the girl remarked, “so much more than is on the surface.”
By way of the glass, Catherine smiled at her, the short upper lip which was a piquant flaw in otherwise perfect features lifting over her gleaming, mouselike teeth.
“Oh, Dr. Shayle has remarkable powers! I discovered him, you know. No wonder he admires me and feels—well——”