He laughed shortly—a tribute to her mimicry—but it was a difficult laugh. The desperately ennuyée pose, the lax drawl, the unaccustomed mental effort and the sudden self-congratulatory “ah-ha!”—hitting off to a hair the lackadaisical boredom of the haplessly rich young boulevardier—this was the countryside’s pen-picture of him!
“Don’t you consider a longing for nature a wholesome sign?”
“Perhaps. The vagaries of the rich are always suggestive.”
“You think there’s no chance of his choosing to stay here because he actually likes it?”
“Not the slightest,” she said indifferently.
“You are so certain of this without ever having seen him?”
She glanced at him covertly, annoyedly sensible of the impropriety of the discussion, since the man discussed was certainly his patron, maybe his friend. But his insistence had roused a certain balky wilfulness that would have its way. “It’s true I’ve never seen him,” she said, “but I’ve read about him a hundred times in the Sunday supplements. He’s a regular feature of the high-roller section. His idea of a good time is a dog-banquet at Sherry’s. Why, a girl told me once that there was a cigarette named after him—the Vanity Valiant!”
An angry glint slanted across his eyes. For some reason the silly story on her lips stung him deeply. “You find the Sunday newspapers always so dependable?”
“Well,” she flashed, “you must know Mr. Valiant. Is he a useful citizen? What has he ever done except play polo and furnish spicy paragraphs for the society columns?”
“Isn’t that beside the point? Because he has been an idler, must he necessarily be a—vandal?”