He got in the cab. "Where to, sir?" said Hickey, touching his cap with a grin.
"First to a pawn-broker's," said Greg. "I've heard that Salomon's on Sixth Avenue is a good place."
"I know it well," said Hickey. He cranked the flivver, and with her customary preliminary back-fires she was off.
Greg got three hundred on the corsage pin. This he reserved for the girl's business, of course. He still had a little for his own expenses.
He next directed Hickey to take him to the Hotel Meriden, without having any very clear idea of what he would do when he got there. He did not know whom to ask for.
As Greg mounted the steps of that great hostelry two porters in blue flannel jumpers, laden with hat-boxes, suit-cases, hand-bags and dressing-cases enough to outfit a fashionable seminary came out of the door followed by three ladies, a maid and a young gentleman. At sight of the lady nearest him Greg's heart almost leaped out of his breast. It was she.
He was almost bowled over. He had much ado not to stop and stare like a booby as they passed. He had told himself of course that she would look very different in her proper clothes, still he was not prepared for this. She seemed to have changed her very soul with her outer attire. In boy's clothes she had been boyish: in girl's clothes she was intoxicatingly feminine. French hat, rich furs and artful-simple suit; coiffure, filmy veil, cunning little boots—much money and more art had been expended to create that perfect effect. And the whole was enhanced by the rose-leaves of youth and the shine of eager eyes. Her hair was dark red and it was her greatest beauty.
Greg was momentarily intimidated by so high a perfection. Girls, if they wish an imaginative lover, should beware not to turn themselves out too much like princesses. She passed him with not a foot between; she must have recognized him, but her glance passed over him as if he had not been. It hurt Greg shrewdly. Surely she might have given him the merest flicker of an eyelash without danger. She was chattering in Spanish.
Next to her was a handsome matron who might have been the girl's mother, only she looked like a Spanish-American, and the girl looked American without the Spanish. At the sight of the third lady Greg was more astonished than ever. It was none other than the vivid dark beauty who had deceitfully made love to him while he lay bound in the Ninth Street house. She recognized him; there was no doubt about that, though she betrayed it by no more than a startled contraction of her glance. From Greg her eyes went with lightning swiftness to the other girl, and Greg forgave his friend for cutting him.
Greg looked hard at the young gentleman of the party. A hot little flame of jealousy scorched his breast, for a subtle deference in the young man's air informed Greg that he was not a member of the family. Which girl was he after then? He had not been among those in the Ninth Street house. In his way he was perfection too; exquisitely slender, arrogant, assured; an Olympian youth. He looked like the slightly exhausted scion of a long Castilian line. Greg's intuition told him that this proud youth would aim higher than the dark-haired beauty who, beside little auburn hair, looked common; and Greg's honest, democratic heart hated him at sight.