Ida recalled the comments of the wise Miss Miller and frowned. This important feminine equipment she knew to be her very own, and although she would have been proud to admit the rivalry of a beautiful woman, she felt a sense of mortification in sharing that most subtle and fateful of all gifts, sex-magnetism, with one so colourless and plain. That the gifts possessed by this woman talking with such well-bred indifference of local affairs must be far more subtle than her own irritated her still more. It also filled her with a vague sense of menace, almost of helplessness. Later, when her brain was more accustomed to analysis, she knew that she had divined—her consciousness at that time too thick to formulate the promptings of instinct—that when man is taken unawares he is held more firmly captive.
Ida, staring into those brilliant powerful eyes, felt a sudden desperate need to dive through their depths into this woman’s secret mind, to know her better at once, get rid of the sense of mystery that baffled and oppressed her. In short she must know where she was at and know it quick. It did not strike her until afterward as odd that she should have felt so intensely personal in regard to a woman whose sphere was not hers and whose orbit had but just crossed her own.
For a time she floundered, but feminine instinct prompted the intimate note.
“I saw you talkin’—talking to the professor,” she said casually. “I suppose you know your husband got him for me.”
“I arranged it myself—” began Mrs. Blake, smiling, but Ida interrupted her sharply:
“Greg—Mr. Compton didn’t tell me he had talked to you about it.”
“Nor did he. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Compton but once—the day I married; he was my husband’s best man. Mark never can get him to come to the house, hardly to the club. But my husband naturally would turn over such a commission to me. I hope you found the little professor satisfactory.”
“He’ll do, I guess. He knows an awful lot, and I have a pretty good memory. But to get—and practice—it all—well, I guess that takes years.” She imbued her tones with a pathetic wistfulness, and gazed upon her visitor with ingenuous eyes, brimming with admiration. “It must be just grand to have got all that education, and to have lived in Europe while you were growing up. Nothing later on that you can get is the same, I guess. You look just about as polished off as I look raw.”
“Oh! No! No!” cried Ora deprecatingly, her cheeks flooding with a delicate pink that made her look very young and feminine. She had begun by disliking this dreadfully common person, but not only was she by no means as innocent of vanity as she had been trying for years to believe, but she was almost emotionally swift to respond to the genuine appeal. And, clever as she was, it was not difficult to delude her.
“Of course I had advantages that I am grateful for, but I have a theory that it is never too late to begin. And you are so young—a few months of our professor—are you really ambitious?”