“Don’t be a fool, Otho. You know you said you would help me catch St. George if I would perform a similar office for you with Alva.”
“Yes, I know; but when did she get back from Paris and her painting?”
“Oh, weeks and weeks ago, and they say she has fitted up a magnificent studio at home and paints away all the time, as if she had to work for a living.”
“Well, then, what’s the use of my making up to such a girl? She has refused every fellow in society, I’m told. And she’s getting quite a spinster—bachelor girl, I mean—isn’t that the latest fad?”
“Alva is twenty-seven, that’s a fact—nearly three years older than her brother—but she is still the most magnificent beauty in New York, and will have millions at her father’s death. She is devoted to her daubing—‘wedded to her art,’ she calls it—but she’s only a woman after all, and some day she will lose her heart, of course. And why not to you, Otho, as well as another?” cried Maybelle, eagerly.
CHAPTER XVIII.
“CUPID.”
Otho Maury joined the theater party to see “Trilby,” and devoted himself to the beautiful brown-eyed Alva Beresford, who looked like a young princess, and accepted his devotion with the careless patronage of one who knows that homage is her due.
It was her first meeting with Otho, and she read him at sight, and despised him accordingly, perhaps fathoming his designs on her fortune as she had already fathomed Maybelle’s efforts to insnare St. George.
The Beresfords tolerated Maybelle without admiring her, and they were not pleased with the rumor that St. George was the young girl’s suitor. They had higher views for the noble, handsome son of the house.