Every window in the large, luxurious room was open and through them drifted a flow of air, scented with the sea and the breath of flowers. Then rising on the stillness came the sound of voices—a man's and a woman's—from the balcony below. They were Mr. Janney's and Miss Maitland's—the secretary was preparing to read the morning papers to her employer.
Suzanne opened her eyes and sat up, the smile dying from her lips. The dreamy complacence left her face and was replaced by a look of brooding irritation. It changed her so completely that she ceased to be pretty—suddenly showed her years, and was revealed as a woman, already fading, preyed upon by secret vexations.
She rose adjusting her dress, a marvelous creation of thin white material with floating edges of lace. She went to the mirror, powdered her face and touched her lips with a stick of red salve, then studied her reflection. It should have been satisfying, delicate, fragile, a lovely, ethereal creature, with baby blue eyes and silky, maize-colored hair. It was not to be believed that any man could look at Esther Maitland when she was by—and yet—and yet—! She turned from the mirror with an angry mutter and went downstairs.
On the balcony Miss Maitland was looking over the papers with Mr. Janney opposite waiting to be read to. Suzanne sat down near them where she could command the place in the woods where the path from Council Oaks struck into the lawn. With a sidelong eye she noted the Secretary's hand on the edge of the paper—narrow, satin-skinned, with fingers finely tapering and pink-tipped. Her fingers were short and spatulate, showing her common blood, and all the pink on them had to be applied with a chamois. Miss Maitland began to read—the war news first was the rule—and her voice was a pleasure to hear, cultivated, soft, musical. Suzanne, for all her expensive education and subsequent efforts, had never been able to refine hers; the ugly Pittsburg burr would crop out.
A gnawing fancy that she had been fighting against for weeks rose suddenly into jealous conviction. This girl—a penniless nobody—had a quality, an air, a distinction, that she with all her advantages had never been able to acquire, could never acquire. It was something innate, something you were born with, something that made you fitted for any sphere. Immovable, apparently absorbed in the reading, Suzanne began to think how she could induce her mother to dispense with the services of the Social Secretary.
When the war news was finished Miss Maitland passed on to the news of the day. On this particular morning it was varied and interesting: A Western senator had attacked the President's policy with unseemly vigor; the mysterious murder of a woman in Chicago had developed a new suspect; a California mob had nearly killed a Japanese student; and in the New York loft district a strike of shirtwaist makers had attained the proportions of a riot in which one of the pickets had stabbed a policeman with a hatpin.
Mr. Janney was shocked at these horrors, but he always liked to hear them. Miss Maitland had to stop reading and listen to a theory he had evolved about the Chicago murder—it was the woman's husband and he demonstrated how this was possible. Then he took up the shirtwaist strike with a fussy disapproval—they got nothing by violence, only set the public against them and their cause. Miss Maitland was inclined to argue about it; thought there was something to say for their methods and said it.
Suzanne listened uncomprehending, unable to join in or to follow. She had heard such arguments before and had to sit silent, feeling a fool. The girl didn't know her place, talked as if she were their equal, talked to Dick that way, and Dick had been interested, giving her an attention he never gave Suzanne. Mr. Janney was doing it now, leaning out of his chair, voicing his hope that a speedy vengeance would overtake the picket who had made her escape in the mêlée.
The conversation was brought to an end by the appearance of Mrs. Janney. It was time for the mail; Otto had gone for it an hour ago. Before its arrival Mrs. Janney wanted their answers about two dinner invitations which had just come by telephone. One was for herself and Sam—Sunday night at the Delavalles—and the other was from Dick Ferguson for to-night—all of them, very informally—just himself and Ham Lorimer who was staying there.
Mr. Janney agreed to both and in answer to her mother's glance Suzanne said languidly, "Yes, she'd go to-night—there was nothing else to do."