“Of course, you’ll both be out on the track. Everybody is going, and there’ll be great excitement. I wish to Heaven,” he exclaimed, whirling towards Clovis, “that you would persuade Emory to part with that beast! He will ruin him!”
“I persuade him! I, indeed! Are you mad? What influence has Cassandra Clovis over your friend that you bid her do this thing? Oh, no!”
“Perhaps Kitty has more?”
“Bah!” said the girl, shaking her mane; “he don’t even know me!” and she laughed, yes, laughed even longer and sweeter than usual—and the night sped on.
In another part of the city I have a second picture for you. A young man of dark complexion, magnificent eyes, close-cut black hair, moustache the same color, a tall slender figure as graceful as possible—altogether, a handsome fellow—sat in the bright light of an unshaded gas-jet, ruthlessly tearing up old letters and throwing them into an open grate to be fired by a match before he retired.
The room was intensely hot, though three windows were opened to the floor. The furniture was ordinary, the carpet worn. The door of a bed-room stood open, and a bath-room beyond showed them to be a suite, occupied by a person you have met before—Mr. George Clayton, a young lawyer, who was a spendthrift and a gambler, a lover of the real “Cliquot” and a gentleman born. The pretended lover of Gwendoline was he and the real lover of Clovis he would be should she allow it.
That night he was destroying all evidence of a past folly, rending apart the tender wordings of a woman’s pen and tossing them away as though he had never cared a straw for them.
At length he reached the last note that lay at the bottom of the box in company with the woman’s picture; this he opened and glanced at. A slow smile broke over his lips.
“A deuced handsome girl! I think I’ll keep it!” He thought the eyes and brow lovely—who did not?—with the brown hair brushed well back.