“Which one is Professor Pendragon?”
“Which one?” Gloria’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Oh yes, I know what you mean, which one on my list. Percy was number one. I was very young when I married Percy and very ambitious. It was—let me see—eleven years ago and we were married just one year. I haven’t seen him for nine years or heard of him for at least five, and if you love me, Ruth, you won’t let him know who you are or you won’t mention me. You see I’ve been married twice since then and I don’t want to meet Percy. It would be painful to both of us. He can’t have any interest in me, and certainly l have none in him.”
Her voice grew hard as she spoke the last words and her mouth set in a line that made her lips look almost thin, but her eyes were not hard. Some deep emotion looked out of them, but whether it was pain or hate, Ruth could not decide.
She could understand that Gloria would be embarrassed at seeing her first husband, especially in view of the fact that he had had two successors, and that Gloria was contemplating a fourth marriage. As Ruth’s own admiration for Terry Riordan increased she found it increasingly difficult to believe that Gloria would reject him, so the fourth marriage seemed quite possible.
Gloria was going to dine out that night and they were together in her room where she was dressing. Her auburn hair fell over her shoulders and Ruth decided that now she looked like the pictures of Guinevere in “The Idylls of the King.” Ruth knew that Gloria had been disturbed by the knowledge that her former husband was in New York and that she might meet him at any time, but she did not seem to be averse to talking about it, and Ruth was one of those persons, who, seemingly shy and reserved, actually so about her own affairs, could yet ask with impunity, questions that from any other person would have seemed prying and almost impertinent. This was really because Ruth never asked out of idle curiosity, but because she had a real interest. Her aunt was to her a fascinating book, the pages of which she must turn and turn until she had read the entire story.
“Had any of the people this morning ever met Professor Pendragon?” she asked.
“No; that is no one but George—I acquired George in London, you know, just about the same time that I married Percy. Husbands come and husbands go, but a good servant is not so easily replaced, so I’ve managed to keep George, though he hates New York.”
“Then,” continued Ruth, more to herself than to Gloria, “it was not Professor Pendragon who gave you this house.”
“No, as I told you, I don’t think he even knows that I’m in New York. I didn’t know he was here. I was fond of Percy and naturally I don’t let him give me anything, because that would have given him pleasure and I wanted to hurt him—”
In the mirror she caught the shocked expression in Ruth’s eyes, and turned swiftly to face her.