“I’ll do everything in the world to make her happy and I know I’m the sort of person to do it. She needs the life I can give her. I’m sure she does—calmness—protection—she needs a husband.”
And yet again he said nothing at all but looked hungry or was exuberantly gay.
Without the slightest resentment Marjorie came very close to Horatia. She liked her more and more, as she told Anthony, and whatever her hopes were, she kept them to herself.
The Country Club dinner-dance had come and Horatia in Maud’s yellow dress with the soft yellow chiffon hat on her head was very beautiful. As Aunt Caroline had sagely said, “yellow was becoming to one so dark,” and the softness of it and the rosy brown of Horatia’s country color made her look like the autumn itself. She had borrowed a black velvet coat from Maud and stood with it over her arm, gazing through the casement window of the living-room. A little early—she had known that he would be—Anthony was there, and he stopped at the door with a long ecstatic whistle.
“Stunning, Horatia! Where did you keep all this radiance? Is this the way you dress in the country?”
“Mostly Maud’s,” said Horatia. “The hat was a debauch—a mortal sin!”
“It’s as attractive as sin,” he agreed, helping her aboard the car.
They had become very used to the roadster, thought Horatia. It seemed as if this place belonged to her. She said so.
“It does belong to you—all of it from the tail light to the carburetor! And the chauffeur is thrown in!”
“Look out—I’ll take it as a deed of gift!”