At the same time, she had an honest impulse toward Hollister which should be recorded to her credit. She had not planned for him any thrilling discoveries of her worldliness after their marriage; she candidly saved him all peril of disappointment. But he, on the other hand, could see neither rock nor shoal ahead. If she pointed toward them, he looked only at the hand which pointed, and not at the object it so gracefully signaled.
She did not see Mrs. Arcularius again. That lady's visit had doubtless been for a day only. The dainty groups still assembled, mornings and afternoons, just as before. Now and then she thought that some of their members—those who had witnessed the little scene with her former schoolmistress—gave her a look of placid attention which seemed to say: "There you are. We remember you. You are the young person who asserted yourself."
She wanted them to address her, to strike an acquaintance with her. But they never did. This piqued her, as they were all permanent residents at the hotel. She made no concealment of her wish to Hollister.
"It is too bad you do not know some of their male friends," she said. "If you did, I should get you to introduce them."
He fired a little at this, mildly jealous. "Do you really mean it?" he asked, with doleful reproach.
Claire did not understand his jealousy, at first; then it flashed upon her, through a sudden realization of his great fondness.
"Oh, I should merely like to know them for one reason," she said, laughing. "They would introduce me in turn, perhaps, to those charming looking ladies, who belong to another world. I like their world—that is, the little I have seen of it. I want to see more. I want to have them find out that I am quite suited to be one of them."
His jealousy was appeased. He softened in a moment. It was only her pretty little foible, after all—her delightfully droll longing to be ranked among the lofty aristocrats.
"I wish I did know some of the men you mean," he said, with apologetic concern, as though she had asked him for some gift which he could not manage to secure. "I think that I have seen two or three of them in Wall Street; but we have never met on speaking-terms."
More than once he pointed out to her a gentleman in the throng whom he did know, or told her the name of such an acquaintance, after transiently bowing to him. But Claire, with a fleet glance that was decisively critical, never expressed a desire to meet the individuals thus designated. Something in their mien or attire always displeased her. She dismissed them from her consciousness with the speed born of total indifference.