"I hate Aunt Annie!" Norma interrupted, childishly.
"My dear girl—you're over-tired, you don't mean what you say!" Chris said, putting his hand on her arm. Under the light touch she dropped her eyes, and stood still. "Norma, do be advised by me in this," he urged her earnestly. "It is one of the most important crises in your life. Annie can put you exactly where you want to be, introduced and accepted everywhere—a constant guest in her house, in her opera box, or Annie can drop you—I've seen her do it!—and it would take you ten years to make up the lost ground!"
"It didn't take Annie ten years to be a—a—social leader!" Norma argued, resentfully.
"Annie? Ah, my dear, a woman like Annie isn't born twice in a hundred years! She has—but you know what she has, Norma. Languages, experiences, friends—most of all she has the grand manner—the belle aire."
Norma was fighting to regain her composure over almost unbearable hurt and chagrin.
"But, Chris," she argued, desperately, "you've always said that you had no particular use for Annie's crowd—that you'd rather live in some little Italian place—or travel slowly through India——"
"I said I would like to do that, and so I would!" he answered. "But believe me, Norma, your money makes a very different sort of thing possible now, and you would be mad—you would be mad!—to throw it away. Put yourself in Annie's hands," he finished, with the first hint of his old manner that she had seen for forty-eight hours, "and have your car, your maids, your little establishment on the upper East Side, and then—then"—and now his arm was about her, and he had tipped up her face close to his own—"and then you and I will break our little surprise to them!" he said, kindly. "Only be careful, Norma. Don't let them say that you did anything ostentatious or conspicuous——"
She freed herself, her heart cold and desolate almost beyond bearing, and Chris answered her as if she had spoken.
"Yes—and I must go, too! To-morrow will be a terrible day for us all. Oh, one thing more, Norma! Annie asked me if I had any idea of who the man was—the man Wolf speaks of there in that note—and I had to say someone, just to quiet her. So I said that I thought it was Roy Gillespie—you don't mind?—I knew he liked you tremendously, and I happened to think of him! Is that all right?"
She made no audible answer, almost immediately leaving him, and going upstairs. There was nothing to do, in her room, and she knew that she could really be of use downstairs, among the intimate old friends who were protecting Annie and Leslie from annoyance, but she felt in no mood for that. She hated herself and everybody; she was half-mad with fatigue and despondency.