“What a lascivious little mind she has,” he remarked as they drove on to Helen’s house.
“And malicious, I think. It’s odd. Her parents are really kindly on the whole. And Allie’s just a nice clumsy child.”
“Whatever hereditary influences might have made this girl, they’ve been completely choked,” said Jerrold. “She’s pure and simple environment—rotted by it just as she might have rotted in a slum somewhere. The only thing that has survived her complete subordination to money and luxury is old Brownley’s acquisitive instinct—and God help the person who thwarts that!”
It was a considerate invocation if it had done any good, for at that moment Barbara was preparing to destroy any obstacles which lay in the path of her acquiring Ted.
She went to the telephone in her mother’s room and called Ted Smillie’s house. He was not in. She tried two clubs and finally located him.
“Yes, it is Bob. I came up—oh, to see a dressmaker. No—just to-night. No—I’m tired and hot. I don’t want to dance. You come over here. Why, of course it’s all right. Do come. Well, I’ll make you some lemonade and we’ll have a talk. Of course. Eight—that’s fine.”
But it was nearly nine before he came. Barbara had found a black dinner dress which became her, and she had thrown open the windows of the second floor library to the cooling evening air. She had found some supper for herself, a casual, icebox supper but for her guest she had made sandwiches. Also she had hunted long and wearily for some key which would open the wine cellar and failed to find any. But there were lemons fortunately and she had, as she promised, made the lemonade. By eight she was all ready for him—waiting, in repose. By nine she was tense. In that empty hour she had much time for thinking and her thoughts did not rest her. They roused her to a nervous tension which was manifest in the quick gestures so unlike her usual pose of lazy indifference.
He rang at last and she slipped down the stairs to let him in. A single light burned in the hall cluster.
He looked down at her from his admired height, smiling without eagerness.
“Where did you drop from? Nowhere? I was going to go down to see you next week.”