So Miss Christie was installed. She was not a gossip, so Horatia never heard about her position in Jack Hubbell’s office or connected the drab little figure with the grace and beauty of Mrs. Hubbell. And no one thought to give Mrs. Hubbell information that might have been interesting about Miss Christie being in Langley’s office. Miss Christie took an instant liking to Horatia. Horatia treated her well and treated her intelligently, admiring her clerical skill from the depths of her own lack of it. Miss Christie was drawn into the atmosphere of the office and in her quiet little way she came to love it.
There was another confidence which was not made. Horatia did not tell Jim that Anthony had asked her to marry him. She wanted to and she didn’t want to. There seemed almost immodesty in telling Jim that another man loved her. And then it didn’t seem fair to Anthony. She had refused him but there was no need to make the refusal embarrassing by telling even Jim.
Anthony told no one. He evidently did not consider himself out of the game. But he dropped his emotional attitude as abruptly as he had picked it up. It worried Horatia nevertheless that he turned up at many places where she went, though usually it was fun to see him and to joke with him and ride home with him or to have him appear for supper on Sunday evenings, with a supply of food under his arm. He arranged to have Horatia meet his sister too, and Maud was all a-flutter when she heard that Horatia had been asked to dinner at the Clapps’.
“Will you borrow my gold net?” she begged.
“Why no,” said Horatia. “That blue dress is good enough.”
Maud had to content herself with the fact of the invitation and Horatia was more than contented with the event itself. She enjoyed the simple dinner in the lovely big house and the visit to the nursery where every device for good health and happiness had been joined together and she enjoyed the conversation of the Clapp family. At Maud’s one always had a sense of striving or of smug content in attainment, but these people were not like that at all. They were living as it seemed best and wise and happy to live—luxuriously but unpretentiously. So Anthony would live, surrounded by his nurseries and his children and his servants and his pleasant diversions. They talked of Italy and of a proposed trip to China. It made her feel ignorant and little. But she looked neither ignorant nor little, with her face glowing with interest and the table candles bringing out the color in her blue gown and the dusky shadows of her hair. She looked charming and she was charming and the Clapps admitted it cordially to Anthony.
“That’s all right,” said Anthony. “Of course you’d like her. The question is how did we strike her?”
Mr. Clapp was talking to Horatia during this colloquy. Anthony’s sister talked to her later.
“You must see a great deal of the world from your office, Miss Grant.”
“A great deal.”