He did not care to call and run the risk of being turned from her door, but after the deliberate compliment she had paid him he felt at liberty to write and crave admittance. He was very guarded in expressing himself, for he had all a young man’s sensitive fear of being laughed at by a woman so much older in years and in life; the enterprises of blasée women of the world, and mothers with marriageable daughters, while they had augumented a self-confidence as inevitable as his grammar, had not disposed of his natural modesty.
He sent the note by a messenger, but no reply came until the following morning. It was very brief.
“Dear Mr. Ordham: I have hesitated a long time—but it is better not. Friends are not for me. I shall not even go into society again for a long while. Think of me as a stage creature only. And after all, I am nothing else.
“Margarethe Tann.”
This put Ordham into such a villanous humour that he went out and lunched alone.
“Does she think that I want to make love to her?” He addressed the dinner (alas! not luncheon), which was very bad. “Little she knows! And whoever would be the wiser if I called out there occasionally? Or is she merely trying to intriguer me? Is it that inflexible principle of sex which will not let a man go in peace, but must hold him in the toils even while denying him the little he asks? Or does she fear to step down from her pedestal? Well, I’ll think no more about her. I hate them all.”
He returned to the Legation in time for coffee, and to help Mr. Trowbridge entertain several pretty women that had lunched there. Later he called at the Nachmeister Palast, sure of not meeting Frau von Wass; she, with many another, never entered the gates save when bidden to a function. Several old ladies were taking tea with Excellenz, and they increased our hero’s ill humour by their maternal petting, for he was almost as tired of being mothered as of being made love to. Nachmeister’s sole charm was her entire indifference to his health and his emotions.
When the women had gone, she invited him into her famous porcelain boudoir, where the walls were made up of innumerable panels painted by a disciple of Watteau, the windows and chairs covered with fading brocades; and exhibited a photograph of Mabel Cutting that had arrived in the morning mail. Of the note enclosed by the young beauty’s mamma, the wise old diplomatist said nothing.
“Is she not lovely?”
Ordham scowled at the picture. “All American girls look alike. I saw them by wholesale in Paris.”