"For Heaven's sake, don't ask that Hitchcock here again," Graham implored Peggy, after an evening that had been a failure, socially considered. "He puts on airs as if he were the Prince of Wales—no, that's not fair to the prince. But Hitchcock is a snob and a sissy and he makes me tired."
"But if Priscilla likes him, Graham—"
"She can't," Graham had argued, not unreasonably. "She must see through him just as the rest of us do; and even while she's so pleasant to him, she must be laughing in her sleeve."
But reasonable as Graham's stand had seemed, Priscilla was in no mood to laugh at Horace Hitchcock. Indeed, she was deliberately shutting her eyes to his weaknesses, and holding before herself such an idealized likeness of the real Horace that no one but herself would have recognized it. Horace's attentions flattered her vanity. Every call helped to reassure her anxiety in the matter of her own attractiveness. Moreover, Priscilla was a little dazzled by Horace's seeming familiarity with the people whose names were chronicled in the society columns of the daily paper. She had seen for herself that Mrs. Sidney Vanderpool regarded him with favor, and Horace had been at some pains to let her know that other ladies, some of them young and beautiful, held him in equally high esteem. That he should leave girls, who could not go to New York for a week without the fact brought to the public attention in the daily papers, in order that he might spend his evenings with her, gave Priscilla an intoxicating sense of power.
But foolish as this all was, worse was to come, and all because Amy disregarded Peggy's prudent counsel. Peggy had discovered an undue sensitiveness in Priscilla, where Horace was concerned, and had been sensible enough to perceive that any criticism of her ardent admirer, instead of prejudicing Priscilla against him, was likely to have the opposite effect. It hardly need be said that Amy did not flout Peggy's advice, but in the course of a conversation with Priscilla she lost her temper and subsequently her head.
It began with a most amiable intention on Amy's part. "Is Horace coming up to-night?" she asked Priscilla, as the two strolled along the Terrace in the hazy hush of a summer afternoon.
"I—I shouldn't be surprised to see him," owned Priscilla, with a becoming blush.
"Bob telephoned me this morning that he'd be up. If Horace comes, bring him over and I'll try to get Peggy and Ruth—"
"Shall you ask Nelson Hallowell?" Priscilla inquired, a reservation in her tone which Amy did not understand.