“A million? John! Won’t you tell us how you did it? I never tire of your coups.”
Dolores felt relieved and extremely glad to see her interest and pride in her husband. Surely not even the exacting Catherine could fail to care for such a man! In that moment between demand and response, she decided definitely to forget as unworthy of herself, of the mother of Jack and of John Cabot the presumptions of the Marquis d’Elie. Undoubtedly they were—well, just d’Elie’s presumptions.
“And you never will tire, eh, so long as I win?” John’s somewhat cynical glance transferred from his wife’s Heaven-blue eyes to those of his longtime friend. “I’ve spoken to you before, Rufus, of having been nagged for the past year by an idea that Europe has been suffering less from the effects of war than from the effects of peace. Some time ago I underwrote a loan to help the Poles against the Bolsheviki. With the ‘Red’ army threatening Warsaw from the north and east, it looked for a while as if my investment in real peace was to be wiped out.”
“And to-day the cables brought the news——” inserted Holt.
“Exactly.” John shrugged as if at catastrophe. “After Weygand broke the Russian center and retired the right, none of the host that swept down on the Polish capital survived but a handful of fugitives.”
To this laconic recital of the high-finance of war, the feminine contingent listened with diverse interest. To Dolores it was evident that, for their benefit, he had stripped of technicalities some gigantic map-changing feat to which he had played financial generalissimo. She, too, was stirred by his success, even though her casual perusal of newspaper headlines scarcely fitted her to grasp its entirety. From watching the grown-up of Jack’s whimsical smile, she turned again to enjoy the reflex of triumph on Catherine’s alert face.
“It would seem that your guardian angel is working overtime when you can’t lose even to the grasping Soviet. Isn’t it just too pathetic!” The unwonted gleam still lit her eyes, as she turned them upon the governess. “Can’t you, my dear, say something to cheer this victim of good luck?”
At the direct appeal, Dolores straightened. She must not fail Mrs. Cabot who was trying so kindly to bring her out, she adjured herself. To be dull when so much had been done to brighten her was rank ingratitude. She must be gay.
“Would that I were witty, like you good folks!” she wished, with a shy, admiring glance among them.
“And aren’t you?” Holt asked.