There was a bright flush on her cheeks as she started up and began to smooth the folds of her dress and to arrange her hair.
“Fred does not like to see me tumbled,” she said, just as the portière was drawn aside and her husband entered the room.
He was a tall and rather fine-looking man of thirty, with large, fierce black eyes and an expression on his face and about his mouth indicative of an indomitable will and a temper hard to meet. He had come in, he said, to take Louie for a drive, as the day was fine and the air would do her good; and he was so gracious to Bertha that she felt sure the Jekyll mood was in the ascendant. He asked her if she was still with Swartz & Co., and listened with some interest while Louie told him of her engagement with Mrs. Carter Hallam, and when she asked if that lady was Rex’s aunt, he replied that she was, adding that Rex’s uncle had adopted him as a son and had left a large fortune.
Then, turning to Bertha, he said, “I congratulate you on your prospective acquaintance with Rex Hallam. He is very susceptible to female charms, and quite indiscriminate in his attentions. Every woman, old or young, is apt to think he is in love with her.”
He spoke sarcastically, with a meaning look at his wife, whose face was scarlet. Bertha was angry, and, with a proud inclination of her head, said to him:
“It is not likely that I shall see much of Mr. Reginald Hallam. Why should I, when I am only his aunt’s hired companion, and have few charms to attract him?”
“I am not so sure of that,” Fred said, struck as he had never been before with Bertha’s beauty, as she stood confronting him.
She was a magnificent-looking girl, who, given a chance, would throw Louie quite in the shade, he thought, and under the fascination of her beauty he became more gracious than ever, and asked her to drive with them and return to lunch.
“Oh, do,” Louie said. “It is ages since you were here.”
But Bertha declined, as she had shopping to do, and in the afternoon was going home to stay until it was time to report herself to Mrs. Hallam. Then, bidding them good-bye, she left the house and went rapidly down the avenue.