[XV]
DISCOVERED
Women have a code of their own, a system of signals, a lip and sign language perfectly intelligible among themselves, but mystifying, as they purpose it to be, to mere man. Overweening husbands, with a fine air of letting the cat out of the bag, have been known to whisper that these carefully guarded secrets are no secrets at all, and that women are merely children of a larger growth, playing at hide and seek with one another (and with their common enemy) for the mere love of the game, that there are no mysteries in their natures to be solved, and that the vaunted woman’s instinct, like the child’s, is as apt to be wrong as often as it is right. Of course, no one believes this, and even if one did, man would go his way and woman hers. Woman would continue to believe in the accuracy of her intuitions and man would continue to marvel at them. Woman would continue to play at hide and seek, and man would continue to enjoy the game.
Call them by what name you please, instinct, intuition, or guesswork, Mrs. Richard Pennington had succeeded by methods entirely feminine, in discovering that Phil Gallatin’s Dryad was Jane Loring, that he was badly in love with her and that Jane was not indifferent to his attentions. Phil Gallatin had not been difficult to read, and Mrs. Pennington took a greater pride in the discovery of Jane’s share in the romance, for she knew when Jane left her house in company with Phil that her intuition had not erred.
Jane Loring had kissed her on both cheeks and called her “odious.”
This in itself was almost enough, but to complete the chain of evidence, she learned that Dawson, her head coachman, in the course of execution of her orders, had gone as far North as 125th Street before his unfortunate mistake of Miss Loring’s number had been discovered by the occupants of the brougham.
Mrs. Pennington realized that this last bit of evidence had been obtained at the expense of a breach of hospitality, for she was not a woman who made a practice of talking with her servants, but she was sure that the ends had justified the means and the complete success of her maneuver more than compensated for her slight loss of self-respect in its accomplishment.
But while her discovery pleased her, she was not without a sense of responsibility in the matter. She had been hoping for a year that a girl of the right kind would come between Phil and the fate he seemed to be courting, for since his mother’s death he had lived alone, and seclusion was not good for men of his habits. She had wanted Phil to meet Jane Loring, and her object in bringing them together had been expressed in a definite hope that they would learn to like each other a great deal. But now that she knew what their relations were, she was slightly oppressed by the thought of unpleasant possibilities.
It was in the midst of these reflections that Miss Jaffray was announced, and in a moment she entered the room with a long half-mannish, half-feline stride and took up her place before the mantelpiece where she stood, her feet apart, toasting her back at the open fire. Mrs. Pennington indicated the cigarettes, and Nina Jaffray took one, rolling it in her fingers and tapping the end of it on her wrist to shake out the loose dust as a man would do.
“I’m flattered, Nina,” said Nellie Pennington. “To what virtue of mine am I indebted for the earliness of this visit?”