Even Trudy was nonplussed. Once the treasure was secure in her possession she told herself it had been so easy that she was a fool not to have tried it before––she even complimented Gay on his scarfpin. But she began hating him also. No one would have suspected it, to watch these diamond-adorned young people guzzling crab-meat cocktails and planning fiercer raids on Beatrice O’Valley’s pocketbook.
Moreover, Trudy did not change in her decision to make someone unhappy. She found that possessing a diamond ring did not remove her discontent––and a shamed feeling stole over her, causing her to wonder how loudly she had screamed at Gay and how she must have looked when she started to strike him in her blind rage; how horrible it was to go off on tangents just because you wanted rings on your fingers and bells on your toes when all the time the world did contain such persons as Mary Faithful, who did not choose to claim a paradise which longed to be claimed.
Trudy was unable to keep her fingers out of the pie. She found herself naturally gravitating over to see Beatrice. Ostensibly she wanted to display her new ring and talk about Gay’s luck and the daring gypsy embroideries he had just received from New York but really to tell her Steve O’Valley, supposedly enslaved cave man, loved another and a plainer woman than her own gorgeous self.
She found Beatrice in a négligé of delicately embroidered chiffon with luxurious black-satin flowers as a corsage. She had seldom seen her look as lovely; even the too-abundant curves of flesh were concealed behind the lace draperies. She seemed this day of days to fit into the background of the villa, as if some old master had let his most adored brain child come tripping from a tarnished frame––a little lady in old lace, as it were.
Beatrice had taken up a new activity since her father’s stroke. At first the stroke had frightened, then bored, then amused her. She really liked having what she termed a “comfortable calamity” in the family. It was something so new to plan for and talk about, such a valid excuse if she did not wish to accept invitations, and an excellent reason for runaway trips to Atlantic City or New York “to get away from it all for a little––poor, dear papa.”
So she sat with her father rather more than one would have expected, made him listen to opera records which drove him to distraction, talked to him of nothing, and tried to be a little sister to the afflicted in a pink-satin and cream-lace setting.
She had lost her interest in Trudy––Trudy no longer amused or frightened her. And Gay had become so useful and attentive that had the truth about the raffle been known it would be the astonishing information that as Beatrice donated the tie pin she decided she should pick the future owner––and Gay was the logical candidate to her way of thinking.
Also she was quite contented with Steve. He let her alone and he adored her––she never doubted that. He wanted her to have everything she wished––and 251 that was the biggest, finest way to show one’s love for another. It was the only way that she had ever known existed. Of course all brides have silly notions of perpetual adoration, that sort of thing, and Steve was a cave man first and last, bless his old heart, but they had passed any mid-channel which might exist and were happy for all time to come. They seldom quarrelled, and she no longer tried to make Steve over to her liking in small ways, and he seldom offered her suggestions. Moreover, he was so good to her father––and of course everything was as it should be. It was simply the rather drab fashion in which most lives are lived, and Beatrice was quite contented. She had never gotten another toy dog, not even as a contrast to Tawny Adonis. Really, Gay answered a multitude of needs!
But Trudy was a real person––and a constant reminder of what Beatrice herself might have been, and therefore Beatrice never ceased to envy her or to picture how much better she could do were she in Trudy’s place. She preferred not having her about. Besides, Trudy was impossible in Italian villas––she belonged in a near-mahogany atmosphere with cerise-silk drapes and gaudy vases. Age-old elegancies did not harmonize with her vivid self.