She had had Mark in for tea, clandestinely, since Lissa was giving a musical and had invited both of them. Miss Clergy had gone for her usual drive and Thurley had donned corn-colored silk with silver trimmings and a new set of cameo jewelry to exercise her powers of fascination.
Ernestine was on tour and Polly Harris had temporarily disappeared from the horizon, particularly Thurley’s, because the latter had innocently had the bad taste to try to help her openly. Collin was in Washington to paint the president’s portrait and Caleb in Europe rapidly burning up the earnings of his last year’s book.
The opera season was near completion and Thurley and Miss Clergy were casting about where to spend the summer, the press agents urging some unusual spot which should furnish them with autumn copy—a submarine boat or the Sahara desert! The naming of a cigar for her and an invitation to sing at the dedication of a great church had been the events of the week while banners up and down Fifth Avenue announced that she had made a record of her “Aïda” aria, “O, ciel assuerri” for a prominent talking machine company. As the loveliest and youngest singer of her day, with Europe flirting with her managers to hear her and America plying her with dollars to keep her at home, Thurley wondered how it would seem to have some new pink-and-white-cheeked girl with an even greater voice than hers, bluer eyes and brighter hair, come slipping into the opera field as she had done. She wondered if she could be half as gracious as these tired-faced men and women who welcomed and hated and pitied her all in one!
She glanced sideways in a glass and added mentally, “You’ve a long road ahead, anyway,” while Mark droned on in impossible platitudes.
A maid brought a card and Thurley read the name, Hortense Quinby. Underneath was written, “Please see me, very vital.”
“Run along, Mark,” she commanded. “You’ve told pretty fibs long enough. Do go to Lissa’s recital. You must stop travelling on such thin ice as long as you are determined to be a slug.”
“That’s no fair.” Mark tried to take her hands but she drew away.
“How do you like these cameos?” she demanded.
“Let me get you lovelier things. There ought to be jewels just for you and no one else—a Thurley design in pale gold—”
“Spare me! There is a front-laced Precore corset, a Thurley ginger-ale and a Thurley Precore perfecto cigar, as well as a Thurley perfume and vanishing cream—why torture me any further?”