Needless to say, at the news of Sue’s engagement, Jack Lamont avoided Waverly Place now as he would have the pest. Bitter as he felt toward the stepfather since he had been fool enough to give him what would clear him out of his difficulties, he suffered even a deeper humiliation that his generosity had brought him nothing in the way of forcing his way into Sue’s favor. He had called upon her twice—once to find from the maid she was out, and again to discover from the same servant that she had left the day before with the Jacksons for camp. He had played and lost—a new experience for Handsome Jack, when it involved money and the pursuit of a girl that pleased him. More than once he decided to put the screws on Ebner Ford and bring him to account. After all, he had given him his check of his own free will, accepting his gilt-edged preferred as collateral. Man of the world as he was, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and considering the affair in the light of a bad investment. Moreover, his mind was occupied with a far graver affair these days, that threatened as it developed to drive him out of New York. He even went to Rose Van Cortlandt for advice, begging her to ransack her feminine ingenuity and rid him of a woman who was making his life daily unbearable. Both he and Rose were much too old and worldly pals not to have talked the affair over sensibly together—at least she was not fool enough to believe that she alone was the only one who could lay claim to him.
Rose had changed. She was no longer the gracious spoiled Rose Van Cortlandt of old. Her widowhood and the Bohemian life she had led since Sam Van Cortlandt’s suicide had left its imprint. She was still a seductive, remarkably handsome woman, but she had grown harder. This showed in certain lines about her still glorious eyes, especially when she smiled; her lips were thinner, the angle of her jaw squarer, the subtle curves of her once lovely throat and neck less interesting. Strange to say, she still preserved her figure, her white skin, and her splendid arms. She looked upon life now with more of the view-point of a man of the world than of a woman. Much of her femininity had gone. She had grown calmer, more calculating; men no longer disillusioned her, though she still trusted them more than she did women. Of the latter, she could still count a few among her acquaintances who came to her studio apartment in Washington Square. All of them she had met since her husband’s death; but mostly her friends were men. Like the women, they, too, had come into her life after the tragedy. She still regarded Jack Lamont, however, as her oldest friend, the one who understood her best, and no one understood Jack Lamont better than Rose. Both had reached that stage in their friendship when they knew each other perfectly. Illusion no longer existed between them. Between two such people there are no secrets—even jealousy is absurd. It was now nearly the middle of September. He had called upon her to-day a little before five. She saw at a glance that he was worried and depressed and extremely nervous.
She flung herself down on the big divan in the corner of the studio, stretched forth a bare arm from the flowing pink sleeve of a tea-gown, picked up a fresh cigarette from a green jarful on a small smoking-table close to the mass of cushions, and after a few whiffs, half closed her dark eyes, and with an amused smile, began to question him.
“Where did you meet her, Jack?” she asked, still smiling. “Do sit down. You make me nervous, walking about like a caged lion. Come! Where did you meet her?”
He drew up a low stool beside her, lighted a fresh cigarette himself, blew the smoke through his nostrils, and said with a shrug:
“At the Grand Central Station—oh, months ago—in January—waiting for an incoming train—the Buffalo express, I remember. Snowed up and two hours late.”
“Ah, I see! So you decided she was too good-looking to be left alone, was that it?”
“That was about it—she was.”
“Dangerous game, Jack,” she returned quite seriously. “You ought to be old enough not to do that sort of thing—picking up an acquaintance with a woman you knew nothing about.”
“I’ve always been able to take care of myself,” he started to explain, half in protest, but she raised her bare arm to interrupt him.