“Ah, don’t be hard on me,” he pleaded. “I mustn’t lose a night. Send her down to me, if I can’t go up.”
“Go on, the poor girl’s asleep,” she answered. “Where’s the use in carrying on like a loony? Can’t you take it coolly?”
In the end he had to go without seeing Jenny, having left his card on the understanding that she should be with him not later than ten in the morning, and that Miss L’Estrange should keep his address an inviolable secret.
The moment he was gone from her, Ermyn L’Estrange darted up the stairs, as if to catch something, and, on entering her flat, tripped into her bed-room, turned on the light, threw off her cloak, and put on the necklace before her mirror. It was a fine affair, and no mistake, all lights and colors playing bo-peep in the stones. She made a curtsy to her image, inspected herself on every side, stepping this way and that, daintily, like a peacock, keenly enjoying the gift, till the novelty of possessing it was gone stale. But at no time did she feel any gratitude to the giver, or think of him at all in connection with it—just the fact of having it occupied her mind, it didn’t matter whence.
And the mere knowledge that it was so valuable proved it to be a bribe, pointed to a weakness in the giver. Some gifts to women, especially splendid ones, produce not only no gratitude, but a certain hardness of heart, contempt, and touch of enmity. Perhaps there is a feeling of “I ought to be grateful,” but being too happy to be grateful, they are bored with a sense of fault, and for this they punish the giver with the opposite of gratitude.
At all events, by the time Miss L’Estrange had taken off the string of gems, a memory had grown up within her of David Harcourt, and with it came a mild feeling of partizanship and liking for David as against Strauss. It was a wayward machine, that she-heart under the bodice of Miss Ermyn L’Estrange—wayward without motive, subtle without thought, treacherous for treachery’s sake. As a matter of fact, before waking Jenny, it came into her head to “give a friendly tip” to David on the ground that he was “not a bad sort,” and she actually went out of her way to send him a post-card, telling him that she had expected him to call on Jenny that day, and that, if he meant business, he must see her not later than half-past nine the next morning, or he would be too late.
What a web, this, which was being spun round the young adventurer from Wyoming!