Miss Goodrich flushed, but accepted his score calmly. "Oh, I shall marry, of course. But then, you see, I am young—really young."
"What are you two quarrelling about?" broke in Miss Lawrence's husky voice. She had smoked steadily since taking her seat at the table, not so much because she had an irresistible passion for tobacco as because it destroyed her appetite and preserved her figure. "I haven't seen Anne blush like that since she got back from France."
"I was just telling her how beautiful she looked tonight." And angry as he was, it amused him to hear Anne's little gasp of pleasure.
"Yes, doesn't she?" Miss Lawrence blew a ring and smiled sweetly. "I've always been jealous of Anne. She's such a beautiful height. I'm so glad the giraffes of the last generation seem to have died out. Too bad, when Madame Zattiany rejuvenated herself, she didn't slice off a few inches. She dwarfs even men of your height, although, of course, you are really taller. But then tall women——" She shrugged her shoulders, her crisp voice softened and she went on as if thinking aloud. "Do you know … to me she does not look young at all. I have a fancy she's hypnotized every one but myself. I seem to see an old woman with a colossal will.… But I'd like to know the name of that whitewash she uses. It may come in handy some day. Not for another ten years, though. Oh, Lee! it's good to be really young and not have to be flattened out on a table under broiling X-Rays and have your poor old feminine department cranked up.… I wonder just how adventurous men are?"'
But Clavering, although seething, merely smiled. He knew himself to be like the man who has had a virulent attack of small-pox and is immune for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he would cheerfully have twisted her neck. She was holding that slim lily-like throat up for his inspection, a cigarette between her thin scarlet lips as she looked at him over her shoulder. At sixteen she could not have been more outwardly unblemished, and she emanated a heady essence. Her long green eyes met his keen satiric ones with melting languor. But she said unexpectedly:
"I hear she's going to marry Mr. Osborne, mother's old beau—or is that Mr. Dinwiddie? How can one straighten out those old-timers? But it would be quite appropriate, if she must marry—and I suppose she's dying to; but I notice she hasn't asked either of them tonight. I suppose it makes her feel younger to surround herself with young people. It certainly makes me feel frightfully young—— I mean she does."
"Do you think it good manners to discuss your hostess at her own table?"
"Oh, manners! You'll always be a Southerner, Lee. New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength."
"Pretty poor prop. It seems to me a sign of congenital weakness."
"Oh, we never defend ourselves. By the way, I hear Jim Oglethorpe rushed poor little Janet off to Egypt because he found her in your rooms and you refused to marry her. You're not such a gallant Southerner, after all——"