She had poured out tea while she spoke. Her hands were unsteady still, and she drew down the sleeve of her habit to hide the discoloration of her wrist. She turned rather suddenly, and saw on Roden's face the confession that it had been due to Von Holzen's influence that he had absented himself from her drawing-room.
“However,” she said, with a little laugh, and in a final voice, as if dismissing a subject of small importance—“however, I suppose Herr von Holzen is rising in the world, and has the sensitive vanity of persons in that trying condition.”
She sat down slowly, remembering her pretty figure in its smart habit. Roden's slow eyes noted the pretty figure also, which she observed, one may be sure.
“Tell me your news,” she said. “You look tired and ill. It is hard work making one's fortune. Be sure that you know what you want to buy before you make it, or afterwards you may find that it has not been worth while to have worked so hard.”
“Perhaps what I want is not to be bought,” he said, with his eyes on the carpet. For he was an awkward player at this light game.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Then it must be either worthless or priceless.”
He looked at her, but he did not speak, and those who are quick to detect the fleeting shade of pathos might have seen it in the glance of the tired eyes. For Percy Roden was only clever as a financier, and women have no use for such cleverness, only for the results of it. Roden was conscious of making no progress with Mrs. Vansittart, who handled him as a cat handles a disabled mouse while watching another hole.
“You have been busier than ever, I suppose,” she said, “since you have had no time to remember your friends.”
“Yes,” answered Roden, brightening. He was so absorbed in the most absorbing and lasting employment of which the human understanding is capable that he could talk of little else, even to Mrs. Vansittart. “Yes, we have been very busy, and are turning out nearly ten tons a day now. And we have had trouble from a quarter in which we did not expect it. Von Holzen has been much worried, I know, though he never says anything. He may not be a gentleman, Mrs. Vansittart, but he is a wonderful man.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Vansittart, indifferently; and something in her manner made him all the more desirous of explaining his reasons for associating himself with a person who, as she had subtly and flatteringly hinted more than once, was far beneath him from a social point of view. This desire rendered him less guarded than it was perhaps wise to be under the circumstances.