Mr. Fox pondered over this with a peculiarly foxy expression. "It sounds plausible. If I only thought he was true," soliloquized this embodiment of truth.
Mr. Allen's stock was higher, and Mr. Fox watched the rise grimly, but he saw Edith, who was all smiles and graciousness, and gave him a verbal invitation to her birthday-party which was to take place early in the following week.
The fellow had not a little vanity, and was insnared, his suspicions quieted for the time. Valuing money himself supremely, it seemed most rational that father and daughter should regard him as the most eligible young man in the city.
Edith's friends, and Gus in particular, were rather astonished at the new-comer. Laura was frigid and remonstrant, Zell and Mr. Van Dam satirical, but Edith wilfully tossed her head and said he was clever and well off, and she liked him well enough to talk to him a little. Society had made her a good actress. Meanwhile on the Tuesday following (and this was Friday) the long expected party would take place.
CHAPTER VI
THE WRECK
On Saturday Mr. Allen's stock was rising, and he ventured to sell a little in a quiet way. If he "unloaded" rapidly and openly, he would break down the market.
Mr. Fox watched events uneasily. Mr. Goulden grew genial and more pronounced in his attentions. Gus, on Saturday, showed almost as much solicitude for a decisively favorable answer as did Mr. Fox, if the language of his eyes meant anything; but Edith played him and Mr. Fox off against each other so adroitly that they were learning to hate each other as cordially as they agreed in admiring her. Though she inclined in her favor to Mr. Fox, he was suspicious from nature, and annoyed at never being able to see her alone.
As before, they were at cards together in the library, and Edith went for a moment into the parlor to get something. With the excuse of obtaining it for her, Mr. Fox followed, and the moment they were alone he seized her hand and pressed a kiss upon it. An angry flush came into her face, but by a great effort she so far controlled herself as to put her finger to her lips and point to the library, as if her chief anxiety was that the attention of its occupants should not be excited. Mr. Fox was delighted, though the angry flush was a little puzzling. But if Edith permitted that she would permit more, and if her only shrinking was lest others should see and know at present, that could soon be overcome. These thoughts passed through his mind while the incensed girl hastily obtained what she wished. But she, feeling that her cheeks were too hot to return immediately to the critical eyes in the library, passed out through the front parlor, that she might have time to be herself again when she appeared. On what little links destiny sometimes hangs!
That which changed all her future and that of others—that involving life and death—occurred in the half moment occupied in her passing out of the front parlor. The consequences she would feel most keenly, terribly indeed at times, though she might never guess the cause. Her act was a simple, natural one under the circumstances, and yet it told Mr. Fox, in his cat-like watchfulness, that with all his cunning he was being made a fool of. The moment Edith had passed around the sliding door and thought herself unobserved, an expression of intense disgust came out upon her expressive face, and with her lace handkerchief she rubbed the hand he had kissed, as if removing the slime of a reptile; and the large mirror at the further end of the room had faithfully reflected the suggestive little pantomime. He saw and understood all in a flash.