"About what?"
"I was wondering if you were ever lonely?" said Nancy, truthfully. "I mean, as if all this,"—they were in the drawing-room then, and she made a gesture that included everything in it,—"just things, you know, all the things you have—and—and the people you know—weren't real. They go. And nothing stays but just you. You, all by yourself." She leaned forward, her eyes big and earnest.
Marcia Vandervelde stared at her. After a moment she said, tentatively: "There are always things; things one has, things one does. There are always other people."
"Yes, or there wouldn't be you, either. But what I mean is, they go. And you stay, don't you?" She paused, a pucker between her brows, "All by yourself," she finished, in a low voice.
"Does that make you afraid?" asked Mrs. Vandervelde.
"Oh, no! Why should it? It just makes me—wonder."
Mrs. Vandervelde said quietly: "I understand." Nancy felt grateful to her.
A few days later Mrs. Vandervelde said to her casually: "An old friend of ours dines with us to-night, Anne,—Mr. Berkeley Hayden, one of the most charming men in the world. I think you will like him."
Mrs. Vandervelde always said that Berkeley Hayden was the most critical man of her acquaintance, and that his taste was infallible. He had an unerring sense of proportion, and that miracle of judgment which is good taste. He was one of those fortunate people who, as the saying goes, are born with a gold spoon in the mouth. Unlike most inheritors of great wealth, he not only spent freely but added even more freely to the ancestral holdings. He was moneyed enough to do as he pleased without being considered eccentric; he could even afford to be esthetic, and to prefer Epicurus to St. Paul. He had a highly important collection of modern paintings, and an even more valuable one of Tanagra figurines, old Greek coins, and medieval church plate. He had, too, the reputation of being the most gun-shy and bullet-proof of social lions. At thirty he was a handsome, well-groomed, rather bored personage, with sleekly-brushed blond hair and a short mustache. He looked important, and one suspected that he must have been at some pains to keep his waist line so inconspicuous. For the rest, he was as really cultivated and pleasing a pagan as one may find, and so wittily ironical he might have been mistaken for a Frenchman.
Mrs. Vandervelde had planned that he should be the only guest. She knew this would please him, as well as suit her own purpose, which was that he should see young Mrs. Peter Champneys. She was curious to learn what impression Anne would create, and if Berkeley Hayden's judgment would coincide with her own. She had informed him that Jason's ward was stopping with them; would, in fact, go abroad with her shortly. Mr. Hayden was not interested. He thought a ward rather a bore for the Vanderveldes.