The barriers down, Gay began a rapid fire of incidents concerning Trudy’s gross nature and lack of comprehension, and the patience it had required to bear with her. He twirled her diamond ring on his finger. Beatrice spied it.
“Why, that setting is just a little different from any I have,” she said, almost crossly. “I never saw it before.”
She held out her hand, and the minor question of a dead wife and a discarded husband was put aside until further ennui should overtake them.
Aunt Belle opposed the divorce trip more vigorously than any one else concerned. It seemed to her naught but a wild panorama of rattlesnakes and Indians, with no opportunity for her daily massage. 322 Besides, she knew Beatrice’s moods, and as time went on, between Constantine’s ridicule and his daughter’s tempers, Aunt Belle was forced to work hard to maintain a look of joyous contentment.
But there was nothing else for her to do unless she wished to be taken to an old ladies’ home. Her brother had said he would be delighted to have her away, her pretenses and simpering nothings drove him to distraction; and he had at last secured a man attendant who knew how to dodge small articles skilfully for the compensation of a hundred dollars a month and all he could pilfer. Like Beatrice, Aunt Belle regretted that the actual divorce must lack a gorgeous setting; it was quite commonplace. But one cannot have everything, and Beatrice had as much as hinted that for her second wedding she would use the sunken gardens at the Villa Rosa and wear a cloth-of-gold gown without a veil but a smart aigrette of gilded feathers.
Beatrice shrank from saying good-bye to her father. It was more than her usual dislike of entering the sick room. She had come to realize that though her father caused her to be the sort of person she was, he himself had remained both real and simple, succeeding by force of this fact, and her contact with both Steve and Mary convinced her that she did not wish to know real, everyday persons––they had nothing in common with her and caused her to be restless and distressed. Gay was as wild a mental tonic as she desired.
However, she bent solicitously over him and murmured the usual things: “Take best care of yourself––miss you worlds––do be careful––will write every day.”
Constantine looked up at her, tears in the harsh eyes, which had lost their black sparkle. “I’m sorry,” he said, in childish fashion, as she waited for an equally conventional reply. “Your mother would have liked Steve.”
“Papa!”––shocked at his lack of fairness––“how horrid!”