With her mental energies thus healthily astir, her faculties bent upon elucidating and compiling interesting facts, she was really happy and at her best. She could truly say that she envied no one in the world.
“After all, it’s no more than you, and Stephen Luttridge, and lots of nice, clever men who deserve just as much of the pleasure of life as I do, are doing every day,” she said one evening, when her father told her she was a chip off the old block as far as working was concerned. “And while you are endowing me with your attributes, daddy, give me your pluck and—something higher, please. Even if I weren’t getting paid for it at the best market rates, I’d never begrudge this summer, that’s brought me to know my own dear father as he is. Thank goodness, there comes Stephen to take me for a walk. All this bottled-up energy of mine is fearful if I get no physical outlet in the day. Daddy, I forgot to tell you, I’ve been brushing up my Spanish latterly. I’ve had two lessons a week from a cheap and solemn little don Stephen found for me. So many of my Mexican letters are in Spanish I found it almost necessary to know their language better. To-day my little professor made me his farewell, and we had a conversation in his own tongue that would have startled you—I really think I talked faster than he did—if not so grammatically.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied her father, looking at her admiringly. If Olive had told him she had taken a prize for an essay in any branch of science after two months of study he would hardly have doubted her.
It was harder work when the heat of July struck the city. Olive, yielding to her father’s solicitation, went off then for a week to a friend in the country, but came back determined not to try the experiment again. She was out of all touch with the people she met at the Claverings’ house party. Kind as they meant to be to her, she had lost the shibboleth, the habit of thought and speech, that could make her one of their circle. And if, on her return to town, thoughts would intrude of wide, smooth-shaven emerald lawns, great forest trees parting to reveal vistas of hill and lake, flower-beds blazoning the turf, rides on horseback, days on the golf links, and long, delightful country walks, she had courage to put them aside. But all this happened to be at the time of Luttridge’s holiday; when, seeing how much he needed change from office work, Olive had, in her own bright, imperious way, insisted that her lover should go off to the Maine woods for a fortnight’s fishing, without regard to her. And Stephen, albeit reluctantly, had acquiesced. One morning, as she sat down to her desk, the ancient Aztecs seemed for a while to be more than ever distressingly remote and uninteresting; then the maid came in with a long chapter of complaints about the iniquities of the janitor and butcher boy. When that was over, Olive’s eye fell upon her calendar. It was the day when, the year before, the Foljambes had been giving their great ball at Newport, accounts of which were cabled over sea, and had filled the atmosphere of the Western Hemisphere. Of what consequence were the Foljambes now to the world that had courted them?
“Evidently,” thought Olive, dashing into her papers, with an heroic attempt to fix her mind upon them, “it does me no good to go a-junketing. Between me and my other life a gulf is fixed that I should be wiser not to attempt to bridge.”
A ring at the gong-bell of the flat! So sharp a ring as to make her start like a guilty creature. This interruption brought her to the discovery that, for the first time since her change of abode and habit, she had been crying over “things.” Katrina’s arrival with a dingy card revealed the name of a Mexican, an ex-journalist, employed by Mrs. Rushmore to make certain researches of which the result was to be reported to Olive herself. In her capacity of editor, the latter had already received several communications from this Mr. Ramirez.
“But there are two,” whispered Olive, who, from her little study divided by curtains from their only reception-room, could distinctly hear voices and footsteps.
“Yes, m’m; but one of the gentlemen didn’t give a card. He’s a—a person, m’m—not a caller, and he’s jabbering away for dear life in French or Eyetalian or Rooshan, or some o’ them desperate tongues, to the other one, m’m. Shall I say you’ll be out directly, Miss Foljambe?”
“Yes, Katrina, and bring me a glass of water,” said Olive, meekly. She was glad to remain alone for a little while, subduing her nervous fit, and swabbing the marks of tears around her eyes. In her present unwonted resentment against existing circumstances she was even inclined to eschew the ancient Aztecs and the whole splendid inheritance they have left to posterity in the New World.