“Constant you are,
But yet a woman; and for secrecy,
No lady closer, for I will believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know.”
—Shakespeare.
Win found his mother in her boudoir and delivered Mrs. Willers’ letter to her without comment. He saw her read it and then sit silent, her brows drawn, looking into the fire beside which she sat. It was impossible just then for him to allude to the subject of the letter, and, after standing by the mantelpiece awkwardly warming his wet feet, he went upstairs to his own rooms.
At dinner the family trio was unusually quiet. Under the blaze of light that fell from the great crystal chandelier over the table with its weight of glass and silver, the three participants looked preoccupied and stupid. The two Chinese servants, soft-footed as cats, and spotless in their crisp white, moved about the table noiselessly, offering dish after dish to their impassive employers.
It was one of those irritating occasions when everything seems to combine for the purpose of exasperating. Bessie, annoyed by the contents of Mrs. Willers’ letter, found her annoyance augmented by the fact that Maud looked particularly plain that evening, and the Count de Lamolle was expected after dinner. Worry had robbed her face of such sparkle as it possessed and had accentuated its ungirlish heaviness. She felt that her engagement to Latimer must be announced, for the Count de Lamolle was exhibiting those signs of a coming proposal that she knew well, and what excuse could she give her mother for rejecting him? She must tell the truth, and the thought alarmed her shrinking and peaceable soul. She sat silent, crumbling her bread with a nervous hand and wondering how she could possibly avert the offer if the count showed symptoms of making it that evening.
After dinner her mother left her in the small reception-room, a rich and ornate apartment, furnished in an oriental manner with divans, cushions, and Moorish hangings. The zeal for chaperonage had not yet penetrated to the West, and Bessie considered that to leave her daughter thus alone was to discharge her duties as a parent with delicate correctness. She retired to the adjoining library, where the count, on entering, had a glimpse of her sitting in a low chair, languidly turning the pages of a magazine. He, on his part, had lived in the West long enough to know that the disposal of the family in these segregated units was what custom and conventionality dictated.
The count was a clever man and had studied the United States from other points of vantage than the window of a Pullman car.