[XXVIII]
THE LODESTAR
April dissolved in mist and rain and the flowers of May were blossoming. Nellie Pennington, who had not yet despaired, and Nina Jaffray, who had, were driving in the Park in Mrs. Pennington’s victoria. For two months Mrs. Pennington had been paying Nina more than usual attention. To begin with she liked her immensely as she had always done. Nina’s faults she believed to be the inevitable result of her education and environment, for Nina was the daughter of a Trust, and was its only indulgence. The habit of getting what she wanted was in her blood and she simply couldn’t understand being balked in anything. But Nina was beginning slowly and with some difficulty to grasp the essentials of Philip Gallatin’s character and the permanence of his reconstruction; and with the passage of time and event Nina had a glimmering of the true caliber of his mind, all of which brought out with unflattering definiteness her own frivolity and gave a touch of farce-comedy, with which she had in her heart been far from investing it, to her unconventional wooing.
Nellie Pennington understood her, and noted with no little satisfaction the evidence of the chastening of her spirit. She knew now beyond all doubt that had it not been for Nina, the reconciliation of Jane and Phil Gallatin would have been effected.
She knew, too, that Nina had not played fair, and guessed by what means Jane had been victimized. Indeed, Jane’s indifference to Nina bore all tokens of intolerance, the intolerance of the pure for the contaminated, the contemptuous pity of the innocent for the guilty. But Mrs. Pennington had not lived in vain, and a talent for living her own life according to an accepted code, had given her a kindly insight into the lives of others. Whatever Nina’s faults, she had never merited Jane’s pity or contempt. Jane was a fool, of course, but so was Nina, each in her own way—a fool; but of the two it now seemed that Nina was the lesser. Nellie Pennington had already noticed signs that Nina was tired of the game and knew that if Larry Kane played his own trumps with care, he might still win the odd trick, which was Nina. But as far as Jane was concerned, Nellie also knew that Nina was ready to die at her guns, for a dislike once born in Nina’s breast was not speedily dispelled.
Mrs. Pennington looked up at the obelisk as though in the hope that some of the wisdom of its centuries might suddenly be imparted to her. Then she asked, “Nina, why don’t you marry Larry Kane?”
Nina Jaffray smiled.
“And confess defeat? Why?”
“Better confess it now than later.”
“Why confess it at all?”