"I think the most successful would be the first to admit it," he answered thoughtfully.
"I don't understand you," the girl replied more calmly. "I suppose you are a socialist, or something of that sort. I can't understand such matters well enough to argue with you. And I hoped to find you in another mood when I came back; but we fall out always, it seems, over the most trivial matters."
"I am afraid I am very blunt," he said contritely. "I came here to find you; what do you want me to talk about,—Stewart's engagement to Miss Polot? It was given the chief place in the newspaper this morning."
"Sh, sh!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed cautiously. Little groups were moving in and out of the rooms, and at that moment a pale-faced, slight young man came up to Miss Hitchcock.
"May I offer my congratulations?" she said, turning to him with the smile that Sommers's remark had caused still on her lips. The young man simpered, uttered the requisite platitude, and moved away.
"Did you congratulate him on the Polot connection or on the girl?" the young doctor asked.
"You don't know Estelle Polot! She is impossible. But Burton Stewart has got just what he wanted. No one thought that he would do as well as that. You know they are fearfully rich—she can't escape having a number of millions. Don't you think a man of forty is to be congratulated on having what he has been looking for for twenty years?"
Miss Hitchcock's neat, nonchalant enunciation gave the picture additional relief.
"I don't see how he has the face to show himself. All these people are laughing about it."
"It is a bad case, but don't you believe that they are not envying him and praising him. He is a clever man, and he won't let the Polot money go to waste. He has taken the largest purse—the rest were too light."