If Fanny had no prior engagement, they might have one last evening together. But she would hold back her news till the moment came to say good-bye....
Drawing near the hotel, she recognized the conspicuously ornamental car of Barry Nolan waiting at the carriage-block, and as she bent forward to tell her chauffeur not to stop, she had changed her mind, she saw Fanny come out of the entrance, Nolan ambling, with an air of contented habit, at her elbow.
At the same time Fanny caught sight of Lucinda, pulled up short in confusion, then smiled brightly and waved a hand, while Nolan rather blankly fingered the visor of his cap. And Lucinda nodded, smiled in turn, and passed, wondering if the deep colour she had remarked in Fanny's cheek had been merely the sunset's mordant comment on an artful glow of pink.
Well: that was that....
Yet it was long before the picture faded of that girlish figure, posed prettily in startlement, brief skirts whipped about it by the evening wind, with its gay look of mirth, half shame-faced, half-impudent, wholly charming ... sweet grist for the mills whose grinding knows no rest.
The pity of it!... Or was it? Had one the right to say? The mills of Mammon grind ever but free will alone keeps the hoppers filled. The choice had been with Fanny, she had chosen in conformance with the dictates of predisposition.
And who could say she hadn't chosen wisely, who had every gift that makes for swift and prosperous progress along the road she had preferred to go?—beauty and wit, ready adaptability, and that highly developed sense of self which often enables the worst of women to travel far and thriftily. Idle to waste time deploring that she had seen fit to throw herself away on Nolan: she hadn't, Nolan, though he might never know it, was but a stepping-stone, a single link in a chain that led to a far shore whose sands were dust of gold....
XLV
When she had bribed her maid to observe discretion concerning her plans, and had herself attended to the business of checking her trunks through to Reno, thus keeping her destination secret even from the woman, Lucinda felt fairly confident of getting away unhindered and unpursued.