She walked briskly for twenty minutes and then sat down on a bench, the very one she remembered, upon which Mr. Gallatin three weeks ago had sat and told her of his misfortunes. Chicot came and sat in front of her, his muzzle on her knees, and looked up rapturously into her eyes.
“You’re such a sinful little dorglums, Chicot,” she said to him. “Don’t you know that? To go running off and bringing back disagreeable and impudent vagabonds for me to send away? You’re quite silly. And your moustache is precisely like Colonel Broadhurst’s, except that it’s painted black. Are you really as wise as you look? I don’t believe you are, because you’re dressed like a harlequin, and harlequins are never wise, or they shouldn’t be harlequins. Wise people don’t wear topknots on their heads and rings upon their tails, Chicot. Oh, it’s all very well for you to be so devoted now, but you’d run away at once if another vagabond came along—a tall vagabond with dark eyes and a deep voice that appealed to your own little vagabond heart. You’re faithless, Chicot, and I don’t care for you at all.”
She rubbed his glossy ears between her fingers, and he put one dusty paw upon her lap. “No, I can’t forgive you,” she went on. “Never! All is over between us. You’re a dissipated little vagabond, that’s what you are, with no sense of responsibility whatever. I’m going to put you in a deep dark dungeon, on a diet of dust and dungaree, where you shall stay and meditate on your sins. Not another maron—not one. You’re absolutely worthless, Chicot, that’s what you are—worthless!”
The knot on the end of the dog’s tail whisked approval; for, though he understood exactly what she said, it was the correct thing for dog-people to act only by tones of voice, but when his mistress got up he frisked homeward joyfully, with a gratified sense of his own important share in the conclusion of the business of the morning.
Jane Loring entered upon the daily round thoughtfully, but with a new sense of her responsibilities. For the first time in her life she had had a sense of the careless cruelty of the world for those thrown unprotected upon its good will. There was a note of plethoric contrition in her mail from Coleman Van Duyn. She read it very carefully twice as though committing it to memory, and then tearing it into small pieces committed it to the waste basket, a hard little glitter in her eyes which Mr. Van Duyn might not have cared to see. She made a resolve that from this hour she would live according to another code. She was no longer the little school-girl from the convent in Paris. She was full-fledged now and would take life as she found it, her eyes widely opened, not with the wonder of adolescence, but keen for the excitements as well as the illusions that awaited her.
She got down from her limousine at the Pennington’s house in Stuyvesant Square that night alone. Mr. Van Duyn, in his note, had pleaded to be allowed to stop for her in his machine and bring her home, but she had not called him on the ’phone as he had requested. It was a dinner for some of the members of the Cedarcroft set, as formal as any function to which this gay company was invited, could ever be. Jane was a moment late and hurried upstairs not a little excited, for though she had known Nellie Pennington in Pau, the guests were probably strangers to her. In the dressing-room, where she found Miss Jaffray and another girl she had not met, a maid helped her off with her cloak and carriage boots and, when she was ready to go down, handed her a silver tray bearing a number of small envelopes. She selected the one which bore her name, carelessly, wondering whether her fortunes for the evening were to be entrusted to Mr. Worthington or to Mr. Van Duyn, to find on the enclosed card the name of Philip Gallatin.
She paled a little, hesitated and lingered in the darkness by the door under the mental plea of rearranging her roses, her mind in a tumult. She had hardly expected to find him here, for Mr. Gallatin, she had heard, hunted no more and Nellie Pennington had never even mentioned his name. What should she do? To say that she did not wish to go in with a man high in the favor of her host and hostess as well as every one else, without giving a reason for her refusal would be gratuitously insulting to her hostess as well as to Mr. Gallatin. She glanced helplessly at Nina Jaffray, who was leaning toward the pier glass, a stick of lip-salve in her fingers, and realized at once that there was to be no rescue from her predicament. Besides, changing cards with Miss Jaffray would not help matters, for over in the men’s dressing room Mr. Gallatin by this time had read the card which told him that Miss Loring was to be his dinner partner.
She could not understand how such a thing had happened. Had Nellie Pennington heard? That was impossible. There were but three people in New York who knew about Mr. Gallatin and herself, and the third one was Coley Van Duyn, who had guessed at their relations. Could Philip Gallatin have dared—dared to ask this favor of their hostess after Jane’s repudiation of him in the Park? She couldn’t believe that either. Fate alone could have conspired to produce a situation so full of exquisite possibilities. She waited a moment, gathering her shattered resources; and with that skill at dissimulation which men sometimes ape, but never actually attain, she thrust her arm through Miss Jaffray’s and the two of them went down the wide stairway, a very pretty picture of youth and unconcern.
Jane’s eyes swept the room with obtrusive carelessness, and took in every one in it, including the person for whom the glance was intended, who saw it from a distant corner, and marveled at the smile with which she entered and greeted her hostess.
“Hello, Nina! Jane, dear, so glad you could come!” said Nellie Pennington. “Oh, what a perfectly darling dress! You went to Doucet after all—for your debutante trousseau. Perhaps, I’d better call it your layette—you absurd child! Oh, for the roses of yesterday! You know Betty Tremaine, don’t you? And Mr. Savage? Coley do stop glaring and tell Phil Gallatin to come here at once. My dear, you’re going in with the nicest man—a very great friend of mine, and I want you to be particularly sweet to him. Hear? Mr. Gallatin—you haven’t met—I know. Here he is now. Miss Loring—Mr. Gallatin.”