This Alice read with interest, but greater interest still did she bestow upon the statement that there appeared to be a coldness between Wallace Martin and Maud Carmine, owing, it was said, to the fact that she had ruthlessly criticized his last play, and prophesied accurately its speedy failure.
"It does seem too bad, dear," Isabel wrote next, "that you, away off in California, should have to come in for your share of the gossip which seems so sadly rife this season."
Here Alice clutched the pages and, bending over, bestowed upon them an almost breathless attention. What could Isabel mean?
"It is perfectly stupid, of course," the letter ran, "and I would not think of mentioning it to you except that we have always been frank about such things, and, anyway, you ought to know. There is a rumor about that you went to California hoping to catch Cresswell's heart in the rebound. People now believe that he and Perdita have definitely separated and that you knew this, and, as some one put it to me, so vulgarly too, dear, camped down on his trail. They say now that the incident of the actress was merely to make things easier for Perdita in gaining her freedom, but that soon after that is granted her, Willoughby says that, as those coarse men express it, you will lead Cress to the altar."
"Darn Willoughby!" Alice breathed hard as she muttered the words between her clenched teeth, the vivid scarlet of hot anger suffusing her face. Preston turned quickly to her, throwing away his cigarette, and ceasing to regard the brilliant garden through meditative, half-closed eyes. "What is it?" he asked. "Something has worried you."
"No," she smiled, with an effort, and shrugged the matter lightly off her shoulders, "some mistake about a very trifling matter. It annoyed me for a second, that is all."
For a moment or two neither spoke. Alice was watching the flight of a butterfly that soared in the air until almost out of sight and then came back to drift about a group of tall, white yuccas.
"Hayward, do you still love me as much as you did ten minutes ago?" She smiled charmingly at him, that very, very especial smile of hers, and he, with his rather slow perceptions quickened by love, read capitulation and a real affection in her softened eyes.
