"Don't believe it. Someone's been stringing you. She doesn't know a soul in town—er, that is, no one but the few she has run into informally here."
"But I tell you I saw her myself! She was just coming out as I motored past."
"I say, what were you doing out there yourself? I thought you went to a matinée."
Angie grimaced.
"I went out to the Bumble Bee Inn for tea. You needn't be a prig about it! Lots of really nice people go, and what's the harm?" She picked up her gloves and trailed to the door. "I suppose you'll ask who I was with next, and I sha'n't tell you, my dear. I'm bored to death doing the same old proper thing all the time! Sweet dreams!"
Vernon looked after her for a moment with real anxiety in his eyes. One of them was enough to be kicking over the traces; it wouldn't do for Angie to start. However, that was her own affair.… He shrugged, and, picking up his book, switched off the light.
Life was beginning to round out for Willa, if a multiplicity of demands upon her time and interest could satisfy her eager impulses. There were still moments of homesickness, and crises of unrest when she would gladly have forsworn the stifling hot-house existence and gone back to the joyous freedom of Limasito days, had it not been for her secret project. That alone held her to her course and would so hold her until her purpose was achieved.
The eventful night which was to mark her first appearance in her cousins' circle came at last, and she smiled whimsically at herself in the mirror as her new maid added the finishing touches to her toilette. She still clung stubbornly to black, but Mrs. Halstead had seen to it that no awkward suggestion of mourning marred the effect of her shimmering sable gown. It brought out her waxen, lily-like pallor and the midnight luster of her hair, accentuating her height and slimness, and her eyes glowed like sapphire stars.
The reflection which met her eyes was a far cry from the khaki-clad girl who rode man-fashion about the dusty white roads of the Limasito country, and rallied the gamblers in the Blue Chip. Oblivious of the maid's presence, Willa bowed solemnly in acknowledgment of the transformation, and pinning on the orchids Ripley Halstead had thoughtfully provided, she descended to her fate.
At first she was conscious only of a great many people; very bored, very languid people who touched her hand limply and then turned away as if to pursue some interrupted conversation of their own. Then all at once Willa was aware of a handclasp more vitalizing, and looked up into a pair of familiar laughing eyes.