“Thank God for this cocktail!” exclaimed Mrs. Harlan piously, as she raised it to her lips. “It’s all that’s keeping me from a bad attack of the ‘Willies.’ You don’t seriously mean that you like this sort of thing.”
“Of course I do,” replied Lola; “I like it better than any of the places we have been to yet; don’t you, Dick?”
“I like any place where you are happy, Lola,” he replied.
“Quick, Bob, send for another cocktail,” Mrs. Harlan demanded earnestly, “and tell the waiter to hurry up with it, or I’ll be turning virtuous myself.”
There was, in fact, some reason for her surprise. Lola was never in the same mood for any great length of time, but up to now she had been tireless in her search for pleasure and excitement. She could not have told herself just why the atmosphere of this rather aristocratic hotel appealed so strongly to her, but the fact remained that, for the moment at least, she was happier than she had been at any time since their hurried flight from New York.
They had gone first to Atlantic City, where Bob had joined their party, but on the second day after their arrival, one of the private detectives whom Dick had prudently engaged to keep an eye on John Dorris, had telegraphed that John had just taken a train for Atlantic City. How he had discovered their whereabouts they did not know, but long before his train arrived they were on their way to Cape May.
That was the last they heard of John; whether he had continued the search, or given up and returned home, they neither knew nor cared. They travelled on, from one gay summer resort to another, as frantic in their search for amusement as the prospectors who journey up and down the Yukon are in their search for gold.
At first Lola had great trouble in teaching Dick that, in spite of her complete surrender of her life to his care, she had no idea of allowing him any favors beyond those conventionally granted to an accepted lover. On rare occasions she let him kiss her, with a little more warmth than is usually considered quite correct; he was privileged to hold her hand; once or twice perhaps to take her in his arms for a moment; aside from that all that he was expected to do was to provide her with the most costly dresses, and in every way to gratify her extravagant whims and caprices.
This attitude of Lola’s was such a surprise to Mrs. Harlan that the good lady went about in a sort of fog of astonished admiration, and confided to Bob, at intervals of about four hours, that Lola was “about the slickest article she had as yet discovered.”
Dick himself, however, seemed perfectly satisfied after he had been made to clearly understand Lola’s attitude. She had read his nature with true feminine intuition; to him the thing out of his reach was always the thing to be desired, and he made the life of his Cleveland attorney a burden with his daily demands of a speedy settlement of his divorce.