“But the scarf! Really, Ariel—”
“Would she mind?”
“I think she would. More than most people.”
Ariel unwound herself from the lovely scarf. And in spite of its gossamer delicacy and the tough texture of her own green jersey frock, she felt that in coming out of the scarf she was coming out of a sure protection into a kind of nakedness. She folded the scarf very carefully, very softly, and laid it on a pillow. As she did this she murmured, “If it had been Grandam who came in just now instead of you—”
Mrs. Weyman laughed, not unkindly. “My dear girl! If she only had come in! Found you kneeling on her precious bed, dressing up in her own precious scarfs! You’d have felt like—about two cents. It’s a gift she has. You’re lucky it was I!”
Then she grew serious. “Ariel, I don’t want to offend you or hurt your feelings. I know things must be very strange and difficult for you these days. But there are a few very simple things I can help you with, I think. ‘Grandam,’ for instance. Just the family call my mother-in-law that. It’s a pet name made up by the children when they were little, you see. You had better call her ‘Mrs. Weyman.’ And then, to simplify things, you may call me ‘Mrs. John.’ People do, quite often, when there’s need to distinguish. And let’s both run along now before she appears. She’d be no more charmed with finding me here than you, even if I did come up with this scarf which Miss Peters neglected to bring. And they’ll be back any minute—”
Chapter XI
Grandam did not come down to dinner that night. But Mrs. Weyman said that she rarely did appear for two meals in the same day, even when she was feeling her best. Ariel suspected that Mrs. Weyman, in emphasizing this point, was indirectly intending to reassure her and make her feel that Grandam’s absence had nothing to do with her own visit uninvited to the attic apartment.
They gathered in the library after dinner. Glenn and Ariel were at one end of the divan in front of the fire engaged in setting up the chessmen. Anne and Prescott Enderly were at the other end, waiting for Mrs. Nevin, who was taking them, that evening, to a dance at the house of friends of hers in Scarsdale. Mrs. Weyman occupied a low chair near by, and she was smoking an after-dinner cigarette.
Enderly looked both handsome and distinguished in his evening clothes. “Much more the accredited novelist than the college boy,” thought Mrs. Weyman, looking at him through the spiraling smoke of her cigarette, which was mostly held in her fingers and very rarely in her lips, since she smoked only to put other smokers at their ease, including her daughter Anne,—and to keep young. “He’s changed since he came. Seems more manly, somehow. Firmer. And exhilarated about something too. I wonder, is it Joan? That she’s almost ten years older wouldn’t necessarily make any difference. Probably she’s the first woman of the world he has ever met,—at any rate seen so much of. She would be a revelation, a dream come true, to a young man of his background.” For Enderly’s family was totally undistinguished socially. Glenn had told his mother this, and added that Enderly boasted of the fact, and was more glad than otherwise not to belong to the “bloated bourgeoisie.”