Ilse added: “You know yourself, darling, what a relief it was to you to learn that I had married Jack. I think you even said something like, ‘Thank God,’ when you were choking back the tears.”
Palla flushed brightly: “I meant––” but her voice ended in a sob. Then, all of a sudden, she broke down––went all to pieces there in the dim and empty little drawing-room––down on her knees, clinging to Ilse’s skirts....
She wished to go to her room alone; and so Ilse, watching her climb the stairs as though they led to some dread calvary, opened the front door and went her lonely way, drawing the mourning veil around her face and throat.
CHAPTER XXIV
Leila Vance, lunching with Elorn Sharrow at the Ritz, spoke of Estridge:
“There seem to be so many of these well-born men who marry women we never heard of.”
“Perhaps we ought to have heard of them,” suggested Elorn, smilingly. “The trouble may lie with us.”
“It does, dear. But it’s something we can’t help, unless we change radically. Because we don’t stand the chance we once did. We never have been as attractive to men as the other sort. But once men thought they couldn’t marry the other sort. Now they think they can. And they do if they have to.”
“What other sort?” asked Elorn, not entirely understanding.