She wore a tiara of diamonds, and on her neck three rows of large stones depending lightly from fine gold chains. Her gown was of pale green velvet, with a stomacher of diamonds. On her arm she carried an opera cloak of emerald green velvet lined with blue fox.
Mr. Forbes’ cold brilliant eyes softened and smiled as she came toward him, flirting her lashes and lifting her chin. For this man, whose eyes were steel during all the hours of light, who controlled the destinies of railroads and other stupendous enterprises and was the back-bone of his political party, who had piled up millions as a child piles up blocks, and who had three times refused the nomination of his party for the highest gift of the nation, had worshipped his wife for twenty-two years. He turned toward his home at the close of each day with a pleasure that never lost its edge, exulting in the thought that ambition, love of admiration, and the onerous duties of the social leader could not tempt his wife to neglect him for an hour. He lavished fortunes upon her. She had an immense allowance to squander without record, a palace at Newport and another in the North Carolina mountains, a yacht, and jewels to the value of a million dollars. In all the years of their married life he had refused her but one dear desire—to live abroad in the glitter of courts, and receive the homage of princes. He had declined foreign missions again and again. “The very breath of life for me is in America,” he had said with final decision. “And if I wanted office I should prefer the large responsibilities of the Presidency to the nagging worries of an Ambassador’s life. The absurdities of foreign etiquette irritate me now when I can come and go as I like. If they were my daily portion I should end in a lunatic asylum. They are a lot of tin gods, anyhow, my dear. As for you, it is much more notable to shine as a particular star in a country of beauties, than to walk away from a lot of women who look as if they had been run through the same mould, and are only beauties by main strength.” And on this point she was forced to submit. She did it with the better grace because she loved her husband with the depth and tenacity of a strong and passionate nature. His brain and will, the nobility and generosity of his character, had never ceased to exercise their enchantment, despite the men that paid her increasing court. Moreover, although the hard relentless pursuit of gold had aged his hair and skin, Mr. Forbes was a man of superb appearance. His head and features had great distinction; his face, when the hours of concentration were passed, was full of magnetism and life, his eyes of good-will and fire. His slender powerful figure betrayed little more than half of his fifty-one years. He was a splendid specimen of the American of the higher civilisation: with all the vitality and enthusiasm of youth, the wide knowledge and intelligence of more than his years, and a manner that could be polished and cold, or warm and spontaneous, at will.
For her daughter, Mrs. Forbes cared less. She had not the order of vanity which would have dispensed with a walking advertisement of her years, but she resented having borne an ugly duckling, one, moreover, that had tiresome fads. She had been her husband’s confidante in all his gigantic schemes, financial and political, and Augusta’s intellectual kinks bored her.
She crossed the room and gave her husband’s necktie a little twist. Mr. Forbes sustained the reputation of being the best-groomed man in New York, but it pleased her to think that she could improve him. Then she fluttered her eyelashes again.
“Do I look very beautiful?” she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her.
“When you two get through spooning,” remarked Miss Forbes in a tired voice, “suppose we go in to dinner.”
“Don’t flatter yourself that it is all for you,” Mrs. Forbes said to her husband, “I am to meet an English peer to-night.”
“Indeed,” replied Mr. Forbes, smiling, “Have we another on the market? What is his price? Does he only want a roof? or will he take the whole castle, barring the name and the outside walls?”
“You are such an old cynic. This is the Duke of Bosworth, a very charming man, I am told. I don’t know whether he is poverty-stricken or not. I believe he paid Mabel Creighton a good deal of attention in the autumn, when she was visiting in England.”