“Women are like tricks by sleight of hand
Which to admire we should not understand.”
—Congreve.
At The Trumpet office the next morning Essex found a letter awaiting him. It was from Mrs. Shackleton, asking him to dinner on a certain evening that week—“very informally, Mr. Essex would understand, as the family was in such deep mourning.”
Essex turned the letter over, smiling to himself. It was an admirable testimony to Bessie’s capability. Her monogram, gilded richly, adorned the top of the sheet of cream-laid paper, and beneath it, in a fine running hand, were the few carefully-worded sentences, and then the signature—Bessie A. Shackleton. It was a remarkable letter, considering all things; wonderful testimony to that adaptive cleverness which is the birth-right of Bessie’s countrywomen. In her case this care of externals had not been a haphazard acquirement. She was not the woman to be slipshod or trust to the tutoring of experience. When her husband’s star had begun to rise with such dazzling effulgence she had hired teachers for herself, as well as those for Maud, and there were many books of etiquette on the shelves in her boudoir.
The letter contained more for Essex than a simple invitation to dinner. It was the first move of the Shackleton faction in the direction he desired to see them take. Bessie had evidently heard something that had made her realize he, too, might be more than a pawn in the game. He answered the note with a sentence of acceptance and a well-turned phrase, expressing his pleasure at the thought of meeting her again.
He was not in an agreeable frame of mind. His interview with Mariposa had roused the sleeping devil within him, which, of late, had only been drowsy. His worst side—ugly traits inherited from his rascally father—was developing with overmastering force. Lessons learned in those obscure and unchronicled years when he had swung between London and Paris were beginning to bear fruit. At the blow from Mariposa a crop of red-veined passions had burst into life and grown with the speed of Jack’s beanstalk. His face burned with the memory of that blow. When he recalled its stinging impact, he did not know whether he loved or hated Mariposa most. But his determination to force her to marry him strengthened with her openly expressed abhorrence. The memory of her face as she struck at him was constantly before his mental vision, and his fury seethed to the point of a still, level-brimming tensity, when he recalled the fear and hatred in it.
The dinner at Mrs. Shackleton’s was a small and informal one. The company of six—for, besides himself, the only guests were the Count de Lamolle and Pussy Thurston—looked an exceedingly meager array in the vast drawing-room, whose stately proportions were rendered even larger by mirrors which rose from the floor to the cornice, elongating the room by many shadowy reflections. A small fire burned at each end, under mantels of Mexican onyx, and these two little palpitating hearts of heat were the brightest spots in the spacious apartment where even Miss Thurston’s dress of pale-blue gauze seemed to melt into the effacing shadows.
The Count de Lamolle gave Essex a quick glance, and, as they stood together in front of one of the fires—the two girls and Win having moved away to look at a painting of Bouguereau’s on an easel—addressed a casual remark to him in French. The count had already met the newspaper man, and set him down, without illusion or hesitation, as a clever adventurer. He overcame his surprise at meeting him in the house of the bonanza widow, by the reflection that this was the United States where all men are equal, and women with money free to be wooed by any of them.
The count was in an uncertain and almost uncomfortable state of mind. The letter he had received from Mrs. Shackleton, bidding him to the feast, was the second from her since Maud’s rejection of him. The first had been of a consolatory and encouraging nature. Mrs. Shackleton told him that Maud was young, and that many women said no, when they meant yes. The count knew both these things as well as Mrs. Shackleton; the latter, even better. But it seemed to him that Maud, young though she was, had not meant yes, and the handsome Frenchman was not the man to force his attentions on any woman. He watched her without appearing to notice her. She had been greatly embarrassed at sight of him, and only for the briefest moment let her cold fingers touch his palm. Under the flood of light from the dining-room chandelier she looked plainer than ever; her lack of color and stolid absence of animation being even more noticeable than usual in contrast with the brilliant pink and white prettiness of Pussy Thurston, who chattered gaily with everybody, and attempted a little French with De Lamolle.