"Hardly."
"It will be dull for her in town. No reflections on your charming society, but of course she does not get much of it, and she will miss her young friends. After all, she is a child and needs playmates."
Ruyler darted at her a sharp look, but she was smiling amiably. Doremus and the men he lived with, in town had a bungalow at Burlingame and they bought their commutation tickets at precisely the fashionable moment. "She will stay in town," he said shortly. "She needs a rest, and San Francisco is the healthiest spot on earth."
"But trying to the nerves when what we inaccurately call the trade winds begin. Why not let her stay with me? Of course she would be lonely in her own house, and is too young to stay there alone anyhow, but I'd like to put her up, and you certainly could run down week-ends—possibly oftener. American men are always obsessed with the idea that they are twice as busy as they really are."
"You are too good. I'll put it up to Hélène. Of course it is for her to decide. I'd like it mighty well." But grateful as he was, his uneasiness deepened at her evident desire to place her forces at his disposal.
CHAPTER V
I
"And you won't take me to the party?" Hélène pouted charmingly as her husband laid her pink taffeta wrap over her shoulders. "I thought you said you might make it, and it would be too delightful to dance with you once more."
"I'm afraid not. The Australian mail came in just as business closed and it's on my mind. I want to go over it carefully before I dictate the answers in the morning, and that means two or three hours of hard work that will leave me pretty well fagged out. Mrs. Thornton has offered to take you home."
"I hate her."