"Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me come!" she cried, "and, please, would you think me very rude if I sat down on the rug and played with your Orange pussy?"
The tea over, the new friends talked with ever-increasing cordiality. Lady Campstown soon knew all there was to know of the girl's former modest position in life and her recent information by her father that she was expected to spend his large income as she pleased.
"He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back for anything in reason, but to find out all that we ought to have, and order it. And you'd better believe, Lady Campstown, that an American girl knows how to do that same! It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just before we landed, with a friend both he and I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to live up to his fortune. He's known he had all this money for nearly a year past, but had no idea how to begin to spend it. And so we branched right out in Paris, and got a suite of rooms that a royalty had before us. I went straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and bought everything in the way of gowns. I had masters in French and singing, and when we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries and shops, and everybody stared, I took to it as naturally as a duck to water. But I must say it was lonesome. I longed and longed for somebody to tell how I felt about it all in my inmost heart.... Then, my darling old daddy fell ill, and his life was in danger, and all the grandeur fell flat as a pancake. I didn't care a straw for my clothes, my carriage, my fine maid, even my new pearls—the whirling wheel of life stood still, still, and I heard only my heart-beats! I thought I was going to lose the dearest, tenderest father in the world, and be left a poor wretched orphan with nothing but things to comfort me!"
She had sprung up from the rug and was by this time seated on the couch beside Lady Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand had found its way into hers. If the dowager felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the speed at which this episode of new acquaintance had progressed, she had only to look across the room at the portrait of a girl who would have been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's eyes seemed forever just eighteen. Maybe she would have been ungrateful, unloving, mondaine or dévote; she might have married ill, or died in bringing a child into the world; or any one of a thousand every-day happenings might have robbed the mother of joy in her companionship. But, to Lady Campstown, her lost daughter was always young, prosperous, lovely, beyond reproach; and for her sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her imperfections of bringing-up upon her golden head, was forgiven much! What wonder that before they separated Posey had received assurance that Lady Campstown would look after her in various substantial ways; and that Mr. Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from Paris, being yet to come, the girl should be invited to take her first view of the riant little town from the cushions of Lady Campstown's well-known old landau, with the quiet black horses and sober coachman? When they had thus agreed to go shopping together in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue d'Antibes, and Posey, for the second time, had arisen to take her leave, her eye fell upon an imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a man she recognized with a swift leap of the heart.
"My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager, heaving a little affectionate sigh. "Almost all I have left to love. He is a dear fellow, and has been much sinned against. Just now he is somewhere in the Balkans loafing, as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol, but I trust he will come back soon, and that certain things I hope for him will become realities. I don't mind telling you, my dear, that there is a young lady in the case, and that she's a countrywoman of your own. I have met her, and love her already for his sake, but there's been mischief made, and it will take time to straighten out the tangle of my poor Clan's heart affairs, and, when you and I know each other better, I will explain. In the meantime, we won't talk of it. You'll be ready at half-past ten to-morrow, when I call for you? I'll take you around to the right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have a little turn on the Croisette."
"An American girl!" Posey said within herself. "It must be said he found consolation very soon." She was conscious of feeling rather blank.
CHAPTER VII
"When in doubt where to go, stay in Paris," had been for some years of travel Miss Bleecker's favorite saying. Helen, who had no great love for the place from her chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when told it was too early to go south. She begged Miss Bleecker to go on with her own routine. Mornings in the shops were followed by luncheons with old friends among the American residents, where, after luxurious eating and drinking of light wines, the women sat for hours rooted upon down couches, propped by silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances. Upon Miss Bleecker's return from one of these intimate entertainments, Helen's views of human nature were lowered for days to come.
In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally drove out with her charge, or left cards upon people who would have resented her getting in as earnestly as she. In her smart wrap and voluminous furs, with, her plumed hat and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered herself that some of the glances bestowed upon their victoria in the Bois and along the Champs Elysées were a late plum fallen to her share. In Central Park, at home, and in Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only the same old Sally Bleecker in a new French hat. Miss Bleecker had heard it suggested that one must come abroad to find a proper deference paid to years of maturity, which secretly was not what she desired. Her taste was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to the wall of her generation by young Americans, nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the ancient, observable in high life abroad. Since her morals were above reproach, all she really asked was a recognition by the public of her successful illustrations of the methods of Paquin and Alphonsine.
There were always teas to drop in for, after the drives, at the cosmopolitan resorts of Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in private dwellings. In Paris, the division of time between five and seven in the afternoon has become as important for the achievement of social idling of both sexes as in London.