“Well, he is more unusual than that. He is a paralyzer of the female heart. I knew him in college. At dances and parties we were generally sure to find him tucked away on the stairs or out on a porch with the prettiest girl of the ball, and he looked so much like an Oriental prince we used to call him the Bellehugger of Spoonmore.”
“Disgusting!”
“But that is a trifling and unimportant detail of his character, Miss Cabot, and conveys a cold impression of Mr. Judd’s experiences. Don Giovanni was a puritanical prig in comparison. Then at college he had the bad taste to murder a classmate.”
Miss Cabot looked up in horror.
“But then he had his virtues. He could drink more without showing it than any fellow in college, and he was the richest man in his class.”
“Oh, come now, Horace,” said the sculptor, “you are evidently a good friend of his, but your desire to do him a good turn may be carrying you beyond the limits of—how shall I say it?”
“You mean that I am lying.”
“Well, that is the rough idea.”
Horace smiled. “No, I am not lying. It is all true,” and he passed wearily on.
It was not many minutes before Molly Cabot was again moving over the floor, this time with the son of the house. Stephen Van Koover was one of those unfortunates whose mental outfit qualified him for something better than the career of clothes and conversation to which he was doomed by the family wealth.