“Poor Phil! That’s the fate of these stupid ineligible bachelors—to act as postilion to the chariot of Venus. Awfully nice boy, but so uninteresting at times.”
“Is he? I thought him very attractive,” said Jane. “He’s one of the Gallatins, isn’t he?”
“Yes, dear, the last of them. I was afraid you wouldn’t like him.”
“Oh, yes, I do. Quite a great deal. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Nina?”
“I’ve known him for ages,” said Miss Jaffray dryly; and then to Mrs. Pennington, “Why shouldn’t Jane like him, Nellie?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she finished with a gesture of graceful retirement. Their game of hide and seek was amusing, but hazardous in the present company, so she quickly turned the conversation into other channels.
Nina Jaffray and Jane Loring had met in the late autumn at a house party at the Ledyards’ place in Virginia, and while their natures were hardly concordant, each had found in the other some ingredients which made for amiability. Jane’s interest had been dictated by curiosity rather than approval, for Nina Jaffray was like no other girl she had ever met before. Whatever her manners, and these, Jane discovered, could be atrocious, her instincts were good, and her intentions seemed of the best. To Miss Jaffray, Jane Loring was ‘a nice little thing’ who had shown a disposition not to interfere with other people’s plans, a nice little thing, amiable and a trifle prudish, for whom Nina’s kind of men hadn’t seemed to care. They had not been, and could never be intimate, but upon a basis of good fellowship, they existed with mutual toleration and regard.
Nellie Pennington, from her shadowed corner, watched the two girls with the keenest of interest and curiosity. Nina Jaffray sat with hands clasped around one upraised knee, her head on one side listening carelessly to Jane’s enthusiastic account of the Ledyards’ ball, commenting only in monosyllables, but interested in spite of herself in Jane’s ingenuous point of view, aware in her own heart of a slight sense of envy that she no longer possessed a susceptibility to those fresh impressions.
Nina was not pretty this morning, Nellie Pennington thought. Hers was the effectiveness of midnight which requires a spot-light and accessories and, unless in the hunting field, midday was unkind to her; while Jane who had danced late brought with her all the freshness of early blossoms. But she liked Nina, and that remarkable confession, however stagy and Nina-esque, had set her thinking about Jane Loring and Mr. Gallatin. It was a pretty triangle and promised interesting possibilities.