She was no larger than her environment. Her views upon and her attitude toward the Americans were not created by her but for her. The fact that James Brood had reached the inner shrine of French self-worship no doubt put him in a class apart from all other Americans, so far as she was concerned. At least it may account for an apparent inconsistency, in that she married him without much hesitation.
She welcomed the admiration and attention of the friends he brought to the house by one means or another during the first few weeks. If she was surprised to find them cultured, clever, agreeable specimens, she failed to mention the discovery to him. They amused her and therefore served a purpose. She charmed them in exchange for the tribute they paid to her.
Those whom she liked the least she took no pains to please; in fact, she endured them so politely that while they may have secretly resented her indifference, they could do no less than openly profess admiration for her. She offended no one, yet she managed with amazing adroitness to rid herself of the bores. It happened, however, that the so-called bores were the very people that Brood particularly wanted her to cultivate. She found them stupid, but respectable.
They were for ever telling her that she would like New York when she got used to it.
Her warmest friend and admirer—one might almost say slave—was Frederic Brood. She had transformed him. He was no longer the silent, moody youth of other days, but an eager, impetuous playmate, whose principal object in life was to amuse her. If anyone had tried to convince him that he could have regarded Mrs Desmond's dethronement and departure with equanimity he would have protested with all the force at his command. But that would have been a month ago!
When the time came for his old friend to leave the house over which she had presided for ten of the gentlest years of his life, his heart was sore and his throat was tight with pain, but he accepted the inevitable with a resignation that once would have been impossible.
From the outset he realised that Mrs Desmond would have to go. At first he rebelled within himself against the unspoken edict. Afterward he was surprised to find that he regarded himself as selfish in even wishing that she might stay, when it was so palpably evident that the situation could not long remain pleasant for either Mrs Desmond or Mrs Brood. He saw Lydia and her mother leave without the slightest doubt in his mind that it was all for the best.
The Desmonds took a small apartment just around the corner from Brood's home, in a side street, and in the same block. Their windows looked down into the courtyard in the rear of Brood's home. Frederic assisted them in putting their new home in order. It was great fun for Lydia and him, this building of what they were pleased to call “a nest.”
Lydia may have seen the cloud in their sky, but he did not. To him the world was bright and gladsome, without a shadow to mar its new beauty. He was enthusiastic, eager, excited. She fell in with his spirit, but her pleasure was shorn of some of its keenness by the odd notion that it was not to endure.
He even dragged Yvonne around to the little flat to expatiate upon its cosiness with visual proof to support his somewhat exaggerated claims. Her lazy eyes took in the apartment at a glance and she was done with it.