“Hush! somebody will hear.”
Her lord chuckled.
“Does anybody know these dear souls and their kind for any other reason than the flimsy? She’s looking your way. You’ll have to introduce yourself, for she don’t know anybody here. Make Boo fall down and break her nose in front of her.”
Boo was a four-year-old angel with lovely black eyes and bright yellow hair, the second child of the Kenilworth family. Accompanied by one of her nurses, she was playing near them, with a big rosy bladder tied to a string.
“I don’t think the matter so difficult that Boo’s nose need be sacrificed. At what hotel is this person staying?”
“At ours.”
“Oh! Then the thing’s very easy.”
She nodded and dismissed him. She was on fairly good terms with her husband, and would make common cause with him when it suited her; but she could not stand much of his society. She took another prolonged stare through her eye-glass at the large pale woman, so splendidly attired, sitting in solitude under the tree, then rose and walked away in her graceful and nonchalant fashion, with her knot of young men around her. She was followed by the dreary envious gaze of the lonely lady whose countenance had been likened to a large whitey-brown paper bag.
“If one could but get to know her all the rest would come easy,” thought that solitary and unhappy outsider, looking longingly after that pliant and perfect figure with its incomparable air of youth, of sovereignty, and of indifference. What was the use of having an income second only to Vanderbilt’s and Pullman’s?
There are things which cannot be purchased. Manner is chief amongst them.