“How long is it since Mr. Pendleton’s death?”
“About—he died on the sixteenth—why, yes, it was six months yesterday since he died.”
“Exactly. You see these four notes on the floor? They are four proposals—four proposals”—and she gave a short hard laugh through lips whose red had suddenly faded—“from the four men I have just mentioned.”
Miss Decker gasped. “Four proposals! Then what on earth are you angry about?”
Mrs. Pendleton’s lip curled scornfully. She did not condescend to answer at once. “You are clever enough at times,” she said coldly, after a moment. “It is odd you cannot grasp the very palpable fact that four proposals received on the same day, by the same mail, from four men who are each other’s most intimate friends, can mean but one thing—a practical joke. Oh!” she cried, the jealously mastered passion springing into her voice, “that is what infuriates me—more even than the insult—that they should think me such a fool as to be so easily deceived! O—h—h!”
“If I remember aright,” ventured Miss Decker, feebly, “the intimacy to which you allude was a thing of the past some time before you disappeared from the world. In fact, they were not on speaking terms.”
“Oh, they have made it up long ago! Don’t make any weak explanations, but tell me how to turn the tables on them. I would give my hair and wear a grey wig—my complexion and paint—to get even with them. And I will. But how? How?”
She paced up and down the room with nervous steps, glancing for inspiration from the delicate etchings on the walls to the divan that was like a moss bank, to the carpet that might have been a patch of forest green, and thence to the sparkling ocean. Miss Decker offered no suggestions. She had perfect faith in the genius of her friend.
Suddenly Mrs. Pendleton paused and turned to her hostess. The red had come back to her curled mouth. Her eyes were luminous, as when the sun breaks through the grey sky and falls, dazzling, on the waters.
“I have it!” she said. “And a week from to-day—I will keep them in suspense that long—New York will have no corner small enough to hold them.”