XXV
Prosperity did not return as completely as Adelle expected, nor as easily. Mr. Solomon Smith, the vice-president of the trust company, arrived in Paris in due course on the seventh day and fell naturally first into the hands of Miss Comstock. For Pussy, realizing to the full the consequences of this situation to herself as an exploiter of rich American girls from the very best families, had moved her family back to the Villa Ponitowski and had set the stage demurely and convincingly for the arrival of the trust company's emissary. She impressed Mr. Smith easily as an intelligent and prudent woman, who was terribly concerned over Adelle's false step, and quite blameless in the affair.
"Such an unfortunate accident," she explained to him, "from every point of view:—think of my dear girls, the example to them!... And such deceit,—one would not have expected it of the girl, I must say!... I know nothing whatever about the young man, except that he comes from the West—from California. One of my girls—a daughter of Hermann Paul, the rich San Francisco railroad man, you know—tells me that this Davis fellow is of most ordinary people, what is called a 'bounder,' you know. Adelle naturally did not meet him here, but at the studio of one of her friends. I knew nothing whatever about it until just before the elopement—the very day before, in fact, when I surprised them together in a motor-car. I spoke to the girl that night, of course, kindly but severely. I had no idea she could do such a thing! It must have been in her mind a long time. The girl showed great powers of duplicity, all the trickiness of a parvenue, to be quite frank. I never had a girl of such low tastes, I may say;—all my girls are from the very best families, most carefully selected."
Thus Miss Comstock skillfully contrived to throw the responsibility for Adelle's misstep upon her birth and upon the trust company which had brought her up. In doing this she but confirmed Mr. Smith in his opinion that the guardianship of minor girls was not a branch of the business that the Washington Trust Company should undertake. They lacked the proper facilities, as he would express it, and it was more of a nuisance than it was worth. He had had a tempestuous September passage across the ocean and dreaded the return voyage.
Having won a vantage-point Miss Comstock next proceeded to give a piquant account of Mr. Ashly Crane's dealings with the girl, who in a way had been his special charge.
"Fortunately I nipped that affair in the bud," she said, "although, as it turned out, I suppose he might have been less objectionable than the fellow she took. I am afraid that Mr. Crane lowered the girl's ideals of manhood and thus paved the way for her fall," she added gravely.
Mr. Smith listened to the tale of Mr. Crane's futile attempt in rising astonishment and wrath. He was himself a married man with a family of growing daughters. He made a mental note of Mr. Crane's conduct, which ultimately terminated that promising young banker's career in finance with the trust company.
"Where is the girl?" he asked at the end, sighing. "I must see her, I suppose, though it seems too late to do anything now."
Pussy had sagely taken account of Mr. Solomon Smith's character and concluded that the banker was the sort of middle-class American who might insist upon the young couple's being married all over again in due form if he suspected anything irregular, and so to save bother all around she assured him that she herself had made inquiry at the consulate and found that the marriage performed there was binding enough,—"unless the trust company wished to intervene as guardian of the minor and contest its validity on the ground of misrepresentation of Adelle's age," which, of course, must involve considerable scandal.
"It would be very unpleasant, indeed," she said meaningly.