“I knew him before. My father and mother have been friends of his for years.”
“I know that. You’ve often told me. But that’s a different thing. I thought if he got to know you intimately and liked you, as he probably would”—she glanced at him with a coquettish smile, but his face was bent over his plate—“why, then, something might come of it, something in a business way.” She again looked at him, quickly, with sidelong investigation, to see how he took the remark. She did not want to irritate him by alluding to his small means, anyway on this night of reconciliation.
“It would be so useful for you to get solid with a man like Bill Cannon,” she concluded with something of timidity in her manner.
Despite her caution, Dominick seemed annoyed. He frowned and gave his head an impatient jerk.
“Oh, there was nothing of that kind,” he said hurriedly. “We were just snowed in at the same hotel. There was no question of intimacy or friendship about it, any more than there was between Judge Washburne and me, or even the actor.”
Berny was exceedingly disappointed. Had the occasion been a less momentous one she would have expressed herself freely. In her mind she thought it was “just like Dominick” to have such an opportunity and let it go. A slight color deepened the artificial rose of her cheeks and for a moment she had to exert some control to maintain the silence that was wisdom. She picked daintily at her food while she wrestled with her irritation. Dominick showed no desire to resume the conversation, and a silence of some minutes’ duration rested over them, until she broke it by saying with a resolute cheerfulness of tone,
“Rose Cannon was there too, the paper said. I suppose you got to know her quite well?”
“I don’t know. I saw a good deal of her. There was only one sitting-room and we all sat there. She was there with the others.”
“What’s she like?” said Berny, her curiosity on the subject of this spoiled child of fortune overcoming her recent annoyance.
“You’ve seen her,” he answered, “you know what she looks like.”