And the problem: "How high can we climb?"
Why, there are twenty thousand families in New York rich enough to be Elect, if wealth were all. I could almost marry Strathay to save him from the ugly millioned girls! How they hate me!
I know what love is like, now; Strathay means to speak. If Ned would only—but three weeks—three long, long weeks, and he doesn't—oh, I won't believe that, deep in his heart he does not love me. It's not time—not time, yet, to think about the little Earl!
At any rate I won't be flung at his head; last night I taught Meg a lesson she'll remember. She meant to bring him home to supper after the Opera, where, in spite of my first experience, we're constant now in attendance; but, to her surprise, then dismay, then almost abject remonstrance, I prepared to go out before dinner to inspect the new studio Kitty and Cadge have taken.
"Be back in good season?" she pleaded. "How could you make an engagement for the night when Strathay.—Not wait for you! Why Helen, you can't—what would Strathay think if I allowed you to arrive alone at the Opera?"
"Then can't you and Peggy entertain him?"
"Peggy?" She looked at me with blank incredulity. "You wouldn't stay away when Strathay—why, Helen, you didn't mean that. Drive straight to the Metropolitan when you leave your—those people, if you don't wish to come back for me. Where do they live?" she groaned despairingly.
"Top of a business block in West Fourteenth Street."
I thought she would have refused me the carriage for such a trip, but she didn't venture quite so far as that; and the hour I spent with the girls was a blessed breathing spell.
"What a barn!" I cried, when I had climbed more stairs than I could count to the big loft where I found them. "Girls, how came you here?"