But whatever cryptic signal she flashed slipped unseen from Maria Angelina's vision. Johnny Byrd was nice, but it was a gay, cheery, everyday sort of niceness, she thought, with none of the quicksilver charm of the young man at the dinner dance. . . . And she was unimpressed by Johnny's money. She took the millionaires in America as for granted as fish in the sea.
She merely felt cheerfully that Fate was galloping along the expected course.
Subconsciously, perhaps, she recorded a possible second string to her bow.
With tact, she thought, she turned the talk to Ruth's young man.
"And the Signor Bob Martin—I suppose he, too, is a millionaire," she smiled, and was astonished at Ruth's derisive laugh.
"Not unless he murders his father," said that barbaric young woman.
She added, relenting towards her cousin's ignorance, "Oh, Bob hasn't anything of his own, you know. . . . But his father's taking him into business this fall."
Maria Angelina was bewildered. Distinctly she had understood, from the Leila Grey conversation, that Bobby Martin was a very eligible young man and yet here was her cousin flouting any financial congratulation.
Hesitantly, "Is his father—in a good business?" she offered, and won from Ruth more merriment as inexplicable as her speech.
"He's in Steel," she murmured, which was no enlightenment to Maria.