“Don’t you like it?” he asked, at last, as she said nothing.
“Oh, yes, dear,” she answered, touched by his wistful tone, and, as she very rarely did, kissed him. “It’s beautiful. Too beautiful!”
III
Horace lived in an overwhelmingly grand apartment house on Riverside Drive. His private door was opened by a man servant, and Frances was conducted to a boudoir where a French maid waited to assist her. She was a little nervous at the unexpectedly sumptuous tone of the establishment; she wasn’t accustomed to rich people. She dreaded meeting the mistress of such a household, not only on account of the unfavourable reports she had had from Lionel, but also on account of her richness. A most ignoble awe, from which no living soul is immune.... It might be too that she felt a warning shudder, could divine the shadow of the pain she was to suffer here. She never again entered that house, but she remembered always every detail of what she had seen there. It was the setting, the stage of such an unforgettably bitter scene.
She was glad to find Horace alone, although she was not pleased by her hostess’s delay. He was in the “library,” a panelled room, dimly and richly lighted by Oriental lamps and crowded with massive furniture. (She didn’t see any books.) He was very cordial and kind, though melancholy. He apologised for Julie.
“She was late getting in,” he explained, “and it takes her the deuce of a time to get herself ready.”
It certainly did, for it was quite half an hour more before she appeared.
“I’m sorry, people!” she cried, running into the room, and swept them all with a smile.
This Julie, the impossible, the cruel, the vulgar! This sparkling lovely thing, with her piquant dark face and the figure of a nymph! Frances found it hard to believe.... Except that she was over-dressed, in a glittering sort of ball gown, and that her voice was not at all agreeable.
“I shouldn’t call her ‘impossible,’” she thought. “In fact, I think she’s fascinating.”