In the drawing-room Betty Tremaine was playing airs from the latest Broadway musical success, which Dirwell De Lancey was singing with a throaty baritone. Jane Loring sat on a sofa next to her hostess, both of them laughing at young Perrine, who began showing the company a new version of the turkey-trot.
“Do a ‘Dance Apache,’ Freddy,” cried Nina Jaffray, springing to her feet. “You know,” and before he knew what she was about, he was seized by the arms, and while Miss Tremaine caught the spirit of the thing in a gay cadence of the Boulevards, the two of them flew like mad things around the room, to the imminent hazard of furniture and its occupants. There was something barbaric in their wild rush as they whirled apart and came together again and the dance ended only when Freddy Perrine catapulted into a corner, breathless and exhausted. Miss Jaffray remained upright, her slender breast heaving, her eyes dark with excitement, glancing from one to another with the bold challenge of a Bacchante fresh from the groves of Naxos. There was uproarious applause and a demand for repetition, but as no one volunteered to take the place of the exhausted Perrine, the music ceased and Miss Jaffray, after rearranging her disordered hair, threw herself into a vacant chair.
“You’re wonderful, Nina!” said Nellie Pennington, languidly, “but how can you do it? It’s more like wrestling than dancing?”
“I like wrestling,” said Miss Jaffray, unperturbedly.
Auction tables were formed in the library and the company divided itself into parties of three or four, each with its own interests. Gallatin soon learned that it might prove difficult to carry his resolution into effect, for Miss Loring was the center of a group which seemed to defy disruption, and Coleman Van Duyn immediately pre-empted the nearest chair, from which nothing less than dynamite would have availed to dislodge him. Gallatin had heard that Van Duyn had been with the Lorings in Canada, and had wondered vaguely whether this fact could have anything to do with that gentleman’s sudden change of manner toward himself. The two men had gone to the same school, and the same university; and while they had never been by temper or inclination in the slightest degree suited to each other, circumstances threw them often together and as fellow club-mates they had owed and paid each other a tolerable civility. But this winter Van Duyn’s nods had been stiff and his manner taciturn. Personally, Phil Gallatin did not care whether Coleman Van Duyn was civil or not, and only thought of the matter in its possible reference to Jane Loring. Gallatin leaned over the back of the sofa in conversation with Nellie Pennington, listening with one ear to Coley’s rather heavy attempts at amiability.
After a while his hostess moved to a couch in the corner and motioned for him to take the place beside her.
“You know, Phil,” she began, reproving him in her softest tones, “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Aren’t you flattered? You ought to be. I’ve made up my mind to speak to you with all the seriousness of my advanced years.”
“Yes, Mother, dear,” laughed Phil. “What is it now? Have I been breaking window-panes or pulling the cat’s tail?”
“Neither—and both,” she returned calmly. “But it’s your sins of omission that bother me most. You’re incorrigibly lazy!”
“Thanks,” he said, settling himself comfortably. “I know it.”