“I’m not in anybody’s train, Gage.” Mrs. Flandon straightened up. “And I don’t intend to be in anybody’s train. But it’s a different thing to show decent interest in what other women are thinking and doing. Perhaps you don’t want me to read the newspapers either.”
“I merely want you to be consistent. I don’t want you to be one of these—”
“Fake women,” supplied his wife. “You repeat yourself badly, dear.”
Entering the Brownley drawing-room a few minutes after his wife, Gage found no difficulty in picking out the object of his intended dislike. She was standing beside Helen and looked at him straightly at his entrance with a level glance such as used to be the prerogative of men alone. He had only a moment to appraise her as he crossed the room. Rather prettier—well, he had been warned of that, she had carried the famous Daisy Chain in college,—cleverly dressed, like his own wife, but a trifle more eccentric perhaps in what she was wearing. Not as attractive as Helen—few women were that and they usually paled a little beside her charm. A hard line about her mouth—no, he admitted that it wasn’t hard—undeveloped perhaps. About Helen’s age—she looked it with a certain fairness—about thirty-one or two.
She met him with the same directness with which she had regarded him, giving him her hand with a charming smile which seemed to be deliberately purged of coquetry and not quite friendly, he felt, though that, he quickly told himself, must be the reflection of his own mood.
“And how do you find Helen?” he asked her.
“Very beautiful—very dangerous, as usual.”
“Helen is always dangerous. She uses her power without directing it.”
He had a sense of relief. That was what he had been feeling for. That was the trouble with Helen. But on that thought came quickly irritation at the personal comment, at the divination of the woman he disapproved of.