“Oh, bosh!” said Latimer gallantly; “if that’s the case he’s ripe for a commission of lunacy.”
Shackleton meantime had entered the house and ascended to his dressing-room. He was in there making the small change which marked his dinner from his business toilet when his wife entered.
The years had turned Bessie into a buxom, fine-looking matron, fashionably dressed, but inclined to be very stout. Her eye and its glance were sharp and keen-edged, still alight with vigor and alertness. It was easy to see why Jake Shackleton, the reader of character, had set aside his feeble first wife for this dominating and forceful partner. He had been faithful to her; after a fashion had loved her, and certainly admired her, for she had the characteristics he most respected.
In his success she had been the same assistance that she had been in his poverty. She had climbed the social heights and conquered the impregnable position they now occupied. Her rich dress, her handsome appearance, her agreeably modulated voice, all were in keeping with the position and great wealth that were theirs. The house of which she was the mistress was admirably ordered and sumptuously furnished. She had only disappointed him in one way—her children.
“What made you late?” she, too, asked; “several people came down this afternoon.”
“I was detained—a girl Mrs. Willers wanted me to see; who’s here?”
“Latimer, and Count de Lamolle, and George Herron and the Thurston girls; and the Delanceys are coming over to dinner.”
He nodded at the names—Bessie knew well how to arrange her parties. The Thurstons were two impoverished sisters of great beauty and that proud Southern stock of which early California thought so highly and rewarded in most cases with poverty. Count de Lamolle was a distinguished foreigner that she was considering for Maud. The other two young men filled in nicely. The Delanceys were a brother and sister, claimants of the great Delancey Grant, which was now in litigation. It had come into their possession by the marriage of their grandmother, the Senorita Concepcion de Briones, in ’36, to the Yankee skipper, Jeremiah Delancey.
“Who was the girl Mrs. Willers wanted you to see?” Bessie asked.
“Oh, I’ll tell you about her to-morrow. It’s a long story, and I don’t want to be hurried over it.”