“I’m Number Eighteen at Shipley’s,” said Grace, finding that Grayling was giving her his complete attention. “Miss Reynolds was my first customer.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You’re collecting data! I see it all! There will be a treatise, perhaps a large tome, on your experiences in the haunts of trade. Perhaps you’ll allow me to write the preface. We thought down at the University you’d got tired of us, but I see that you’d grown beyond our feeble aid. I’m infinitely relieved!”
“Stop kidding me!” said Grace, glancing about to make sure they were not overheard. “I’m a shop girl, trying to earn an honest living.”
Atwood came up as dinner was announced and when they reached the table Grace found that Grayling was to sit at her left. Mrs. Trenton’s place was a little to her right on the further side, an arrangement that made it possible for Grace to observe her without falling within the direct line of her vision.
Grace, turning to Atwood, who frankly declared his purpose to monopolize her, found it possible to study at leisure the woman about whom she had so constantly speculated. Mrs. Trenton was, she surmised, nearly the forty years to which Trenton himself confessed and there was in her large gray-blue eyes something of the look of weariness to be found in the eyes of people who live upon excitement and sensation. Her hair had a reddish tinge and the gray had begun to show in it. She bore every mark which to a sophisticated feminine inspection announces that a woman has a particular care for her appearance. She gave an impression of smoothness and finish. She wore a string of pearls and on her left hand a large pearl set in diamonds, but no wedding ring, a fact which Grace interpreted as signifying that in this fashion the author of “Clues to a New Social Order,” let the world know her indifference to the traditional symbol by which womankind advertise their married state. She found herself wondering whether Ward Trenton had given his wife the necklace or the ring with the diamond-encircled pearl. Mrs. Trenton’s gown had the metropolitan accent; it was the product unmistakably of one of those ultra smart New York dressmakers whose advertisements Grace had noted from time to time in magazines for women.
Mrs. Trenton had entered into a discussion with Dr. Ridgely of the industrial conditions created by the war; and she was repeating what some diplomat had said to her at a dinner in Washington. Her head and shoulders moved almost constantly as she talked, and her hands seemed never idle, playing with her beads or fingering a spoon she had unconsciously chosen as a plaything. She laughed frequently, a quick, nervous, mirthless little laugh, while her eyes stared vacantly, as though she were not fully conscious of what she said or what was being said to her. She spoke crisply, with the effect of biting off her words. Grace was interested in her mastery of the broad a, which western folk profess to scorn but nevertheless envy in pilgrims from the fabled East. Her voice and enunciation reminded Grace of the speech an English woman who had once lectured at the University.
“Oh, that!”
This was evidently a pet expression, uttered with a shrug and a lifting of the brows. It meant much or nothing as the hearer chose to take it. Grace had read much about the neurotic American woman and Mrs. Trenton undoubtedly expressed the type. It was difficult to think of her as Ward Trenton’s wife. The two were irreconcilably different. Grace’s mind wearied in the attempt to correlate them, but she gained ease as the moments sped by. By the time the meat course was served the talk had become general. Every one wished to hear Mrs. Trenton and she met in a fashion of her own the questions that were directed at her. Evidently she was used to being questioned and she answered indifferently, sometimes disdainfully, or turned the question upon the inquirer.
Atwood was exerting himself to hold Grace’s attention. He had never heard of Mary Graham Trenton till Miss Reynolds’s invitation sent him to the newspapers for information. He was not sure now that he knew just how she came to be a celebrity and with Grace beside him he didn’t care.
“I’ve been wild to see you ever since that night we put on the little sketch at Mac’s,” he said confidingly. “You were perfectly grand; never saw a finer piece of good sportsmanship. I met Evelyn the next day and we’ve talked about it ever since when we’ve been alone. But old Bob is certainly sore! He’s really a good fellow, you know; but he was off his game that night. You scored big with Evelyn. She was really hurt when you refused her invitation to dinner. I was to be in the party—begged for an invitation; I swear I did! Please let me pull a party pretty soon—say at the Country Club, and ask the Cummingses. Really I’m respectable! I’ve got regular parents and aunts and everything.”