"No, no; something ever so much better than that. At least," the Marchesa hastily corrected herself, "something more immediately helpful. His debts, dear, my silly boy's debts! Dexter has promised ... has authorized me to cable that he need not sail, as everything will be paid. It's more, far more, than I could have hoped!" The happy mother possessed herself of Mrs. Manford's unresponsive hand.
Pauline freed the hand abruptly. She felt the need of assimilating and interpreting this news as rapidly as possible, without betraying undue astonishment and yet without engaging her responsibility; but the effort was beyond her, and she could only sit and stare. Dexter had promised to pay Michelangelo's debts—but with whose money? And why?
"I'm sure Dexter wants to do all he can to help you about Michelangelo—we both do. But—"
Pauline's brain was whirling; she found it impossible to go on. She knew by heart the extent of Michelangelo's debts. Amalasuntha took care that everyone did. She seemed to feel a sort of fatuous pride in their enormity, and was always dinning it into her cousin's ears. Dexter, if he had really made such a promise, must have made it in his wife's name; and to do so without consulting her was so unlike him that the idea deepened her bewilderment.
"Are you sure? I'm sorry, Amalasuntha—but this comes as a surprise... Dexter and I were to talk the matter over ... to see what could be done..."
"Darling, it's so like you to belittle your own generosity—you always do! And so does Dexter. But in this case—well, the cable's gone; so why deny it?" triumphed the Marchesa.
When Maisie Bruss returned, Pauline was still sitting with an idle pencil before the pile of bills and estimates. She fixed an unseeing eye on her secretary. "These things will have to wait. I'm dreadfully tired, I don't know why. But I'll go over them all early tomorrow, before you come; and—Maisie—I hate to ask it; but do you think you could get here by eight o'clock instead of nine? There's so much to be done; and I want to get you off to Cedarledge as soon as possible."
Maisie, a little paler and more drawn than usual, declared that of course she would turn up at eight.
Even after she had gone Pauline did not move, or give another glance to the papers. For the first time in her life she had an obscure sense of moving among incomprehensible and overpowering forces. She could not, to herself, have put it even as clearly as that—she just dimly felt that, between her and her usual firm mastery of facts, something nebulous and impenetrable was closing in... Nona—what if she were to consult Nona? The girl sometimes struck her as having an uncanny gift of divination, as getting at certain mysteries of mood and character more quickly and clearly than her mother... "Though, when it comes to practical things, poor child, she's not much more use than Jim..."
Jim! His name called up the other associated with it. Lita was now another source of worry. Whichever way Pauline looked, the same choking obscurity enveloped her. Even about Jim and Lita it clung in a dense fog, darkening and distorting what, only a short time ago, had seemed a daylight case of domestic harmony. Money, health, good looks, a beautiful baby ... and now all this fuss about having to express one's own personality. Yes; Lita's attitude was just as confusing as Dexter's. Was Dexter trying to express his own personality too? If only they would all talk things out with her—help her to understand, instead of moving about her in the obscurity, like so many burglars with dark lanterns! This image jerked her attention back to the Cedarledge estimates, and wearily she adjusted her eye-glasses and took up her pencil...