"Go home! Why, Sylvia, you haven't been here two weeks yet!"
"I know. But I'm incurably a home person. I've had a wonderful time but I want to see Arden Hall and Felicia and--"
"Jack?" teased Jack's sister languidly.
Sylvia flushed a little. At the moment it did seem as if she would be very glad, indeed, to see Jack. Jack was so clean and young and joyous and wholesome. He seemed to her to belong to a different world from that which his sister inhabited. But, after all, at Jeanette's insistence, Sylvia agreed to stay another week.
Jeanette herself was almost feverish in her gayety these days. It seemed, indeed, as if she could not stop if she tried, as if "all the devils of Hell were loose and after her" as Jack had said. She was a puzzle to Sylvia. That she was not happy was apparent, but she was always gay, talkative, full of quick laughter and brilliant plans for new pleasures, something fresh every hour. There were always many men in her wake. Usually they were men of brains, men "who did things," as the phrase goes, musicians, writers, artists and the like. Jeanette did not affect fools, as she had said curtly to Sylvia once. She had brains herself and used them. She was rather famous and rather feared for her somewhat satirical wit. Her husband was a quiet, scholarly aristocrat, who spent most of his time reading memoirs of somebody or other, or bringing out elegant "privately printed" monographs. In Jeanette's scheme of things he seemed scarcely to count at all, beyond the essential facts of having provided her with an extravagant income and an assured place in New York society. To do her justice, however, Jeanette was by no means dependent upon her husband for these things. She made her own circle wherever she went. She did not need either the Latham money or name to assure her leadership. She was a born queen. These factors were merely contributing circumstances.
Among Jeanette's varied and numerous retinue was one young man whom Sylvia found less easy than the others to place. This was an artist, Charlton Haynes by name, a newcomer in the city who had been for some time engaged in "doing" Jeanette's portrait. Wherever Jeanette was, the young portrait painter appeared to be also by some magic process. The two had little to say to each other in public but Sylvia had noticed more than once how the painter's rather gloomy face lit up when Jeanette approached, giving an effect much like a sudden sunshine after a passing cloud. More than once, too, Sylvia had seen a flash of some quick, wordless communication pass between them. They spent long hours together mornings in the great ball-room where he worked in the north light. When Sylvia was with them, as she sometimes was, the artist was rather silent and absorbed in his work and Sylvia thought if he were always so quiet he must be rather dull company.
One morning she suffered an abrupt enlightenment as to the relations between her hostess and the artist. Jeanette had been detained and had asked Sylvia to go to the ballroom and explain to Mr. Haynes that she would be with him as soon as possible. As Sylvia opened the door he had turned with outstretched arms and an impulsive "Sweetheart, you are dreadfully late." And then his hands had fallen and a shamed, hang-dog, caught-in-the-act expression banished the eager look of expectant joy on his face as he met Sylvia's eyes and saw her quick flush.
He shrugged and tried to make the best of the situation by a hasty "Beg pardon, Miss Sylvia. I didn't see it was you."
"So I judged," said Sylvia and delivered her message gravely and departed. She wondered if this was what Jack had guessed and if that was why he had wanted her to go to Jeanette. Had he thought she could save her? Poor Jeanette! Could any one save her but herself?
Two hours later Jeanette came to Sylvia, writing letters in her own room at the little teakwood desk.