“Oh, I hope he does. Ramon is such a nice boy.”
She was now powdering her nose. The widow made mental comment. “Never missed a dab. William Benson’s a fool—though, of course, she may have changed her mind.” This she proceeded to find out. “Your new man seems nice?”
“He is.” Followed a long description of Gordon’s night vigil with the child. She concluded with a characteristic reservation, “But—”
“But what?”
“He’s been going to see Felicia at the fonda. Sliver took him there, one day, and he says that he has never been again. But—she’s wearing his watch-fob in her bosom— Yes, yes! I know! A peona will beg the shoes off any man’s feet. She might easily have got it at one sitting. But—”
Her nod conveyed her feeling that, allowances having been generously made, young men whose watch-fobs are found in peonas’ bosoms, will bear watching. “Of course that is nothing to me, and, as you say, he is very nice. I like Bull better than any of them. Dear me! why isn’t he twenty years younger? Then I could marry him. Oh—”
She paused, gazing at the widow, for, though the latter was exceedingly subtle, the subtlety of one woman is plain print for another. A little smile, sudden lighting of the eye! The widow stood betrayed.
Lee jumped an enormous distance to her conclusion. “Oh, wouldn’t that be just too lovely! Is it—settled?”
The widow, of course, shook her head.
“But it will be.”