Mrs. De Lancey Smythe might have been anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five. She was tall, well-proportioned and a decided brunette. At a glance one would have decided her to be very handsome, but close observers would have noted a hard expression about the eyes and mouth that completely destroyed the effect of beauty. As for her daughter, Marian, she was a small, slender insignificant young woman who seemed entirely overshadowed by her mother’s personality.
Both mother and daughter were dressed perhaps a shade too elaborately for good taste, and there was something about them that immediately aroused a sense of vague disapproval in the minds of the Stuart party.
“Maud is always so thoughtful of her friends,” murmured Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, turning to Miss Sallie with well simulated appreciation. “She knows how fond we are of sailing.”
Miss Sallie looked sharply at the speaker. The De Lancey Smythes were evidently unaware of Mr. Warren’s animosity toward them. She was about to frame some polite excuse for not going on the launch, hoping to thus nip in the bud the proposed sail, when suddenly meeting Mr. Warren’s eyes, she saw an expression of entreaty in them that made her hesitate.
“I hope you and your ‘Automobile Girls’ will not disappoint me,” he said pleadingly.
“Thank you,” responded Miss Stuart. “We shall be pleased to go.”
With a formal bow to Mrs. De Lancey Smythe and her daughter, Miss Sallie marshaled her little force and left the piazza.
“Very charming people,” remarked Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, to Maud Warren, after they had disappeared. But there was an unpleasant light in her eyes, and a certain tightening of her lips that showed resentment at the manner of her reception by the Stuart party.
“We shall be obliged to play our cards very carefully,” she warned Marian, when in the privacy of their own apartment. “That Miss Stuart seems already inclined to be hostile. As for those girls——”
“I think they’re the nicest looking girls I’ve seen for a long time. Ever so much nicer than Maud Warren,” exclaimed Marian.