“By George! I hadn’t an idea, Nina. I knew you’d been flirting with him—and all that—but marriage!”
She nodded.
“You are a good sort,” he grinned. “Do you really mean it? Of course I’ll help you if I can, but I hardly see——”
“You don’t have to see. Jane Loring may still have a fancy for Phil Gallatin, but it ought to be perfectly obvious that she can’t marry him if he’s going to marry me. All I want you to do just now is to make yourself necessary to Jane Loring. Propose to her again to-morrow,” and then with convincing assurance, “I think she’ll accept you.”
“You do? Why?”
“That, if you’ll pardon me, is a matter I do not care to discuss.” She arose and dismissed him gracefully, and Van Duyn wandered forth into Gramercy Park with a feeling very like that of a timorous hospital patient who has for the first time been subjected to the X-ray.
Nina lunched alone, then dressed for the afternoon and ordered her machine. She had made no mistake in presupposing that Jane Loring’s curiosity would outweigh her prejudices. In their talk upon the telephone there had been a slight hesitation, scarcely noticeable, on Jane’s part, after which, she had expressed herself as delighted at the opportunity of seeing Nina at the Loring house.
Miss Jaffray entered the portals of the vast establishment, her slender figure lost in the great drawing-room, as she moved restlessly from one object of art to another awaiting her hostess, like a mischievous and lonely bacillus newly liberated into a new field of endeavor.
“Nina, dear!” said Jane effusively as she entered. “So sweet of you. I haven’t really had a chance to have a talk with you for ages.”