“Ah! I hadn’t noticed it,” remarked Wingfield. “She struck me as a young person who would take care of herself. They’re an interesting type, these young women who corral old gentlemen of established position and wealth. The Colonel must have a fine estate; he’s made money ever since he inherited the Wayne fortune and he’s never lost any.”
“Um!”
This grunt of Walsh’s was discouraging. Wingfield’s own reticence had been admired, but Walsh’s was even more opaque; he felt that the old fellow was a hooded falcon who could, if given free flight, penetrate far into the mystery that surrounded Mrs. Craighill.
“I guess we might call there to-night,” Walsh continued. “I’m not on to the social game, but I suppose that, having had the Colonel’s announcement cards and having met the bride at Mrs. Blair’s, it’s up to me to call. As I have no official knowledge of the Colonel’s absence I guess I’ll drop in to-night and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to come along. You can dine with me at the Club. Do you put on a white vest for evening calls or will a black one do?”
The proposed visit was not to Wingfield’s taste. Wayne had distinctly told him that Mrs. Craighill was in Boston with her husband, and in the circumstances for him to call at the house with Walsh, of all men, would be an event whose implication would not be wasted on a man of Wayne Craighill’s sharp perception. He was averse to going; the very idea was repugnant; but Walsh clearly wished his company and he finally agreed to go.
“Very well, I’ll arrange the transportation”; and Walsh dismissed him with an injunction not to break his neck on the office steps.
CHAPTER XX
EVENING AT THE CRAIGHILLS’
MRS. CRAIGHILL had not relaxed her severity toward Wayne when, with Jean between them, they sat down to dinner. She continued, however, her protecting attitude toward the girl, whom she had installed in the best of the guest chambers adjoining her own room. Any doubts that had crossed her mind as to the extent of Wayne’s knowledge of the young woman had been dispelled by Jean herself. She had sought eagerly for any basis for suspicions, but Miss Morley was apparently all that she pretended to be; and Wayne’s own manner at the table set the seal of truth upon his protestations of merest acquaintance as uttered at the club-house. The girl interested Wayne and it was, Mrs. Craighill divined, the interest of novelty; she was of an order of woman that had not heretofore attracted his attention. And seeing his absorption, noting the pains he took to be entertaining, Mrs. Craighill’s glances in his direction gained nothing in amiability. He imagined that she wished to punish him for having been caught in the act of kissing her; and his acceptance of the situation, and his cool appropriation of the girl whom she had brought home merely for the purpose of placation, added to the blackness of his offenses.
The talk, as led by Wayne, fell into lines that served to minimize Mrs. Craighill’s importance in the trio. She did not care about magazine illustration, or know very much about Claude Monet; and Miss Morley’s ignorance of grand opera, and her naïve preferences in the music she did know called for nothing but occasional smiles of polite indulgence from Mrs. Craighill. Wayne was making far too much of the girl; it was unnecessary and unbecoming. Her poverty, proclaimed in her shabby clothing, her lack of ease, her deficiencies in a hundred other trifling ways irritated Mrs. Craighill. But if the girl did not know how to manage her artichoke she was not dull. When she became aware of her hostess’s silence she made a point of including her in the talk.
It was an event in the girl’s life, this hour at the prettily set table, with its bowl of roses aglow in the soft candle-light; the silent service; the leisure born of plenty and secure from the clutch of time. Her awe passed. Mrs. Craighill had been kind and Jean was taking her kindness at its face value, and in apparent ignorance of its ulterior intention. She saw in Mrs. Craighill a woman of the ampler world, whom the gods had favoured with good looks and fortune, and Jean studied her with an artist’s eye. Adelaide Craighill’s head, so admirably set on her pretty neck, had never pleased anyone more. That half-languorous droop of the lids that withheld the full gaze of her eyes for sudden, unexpected, flashing contacts, was not without its fascination. If Jean Morley interested Mrs. Craighill, Mrs. Craighill interested Jean Morley even more.