CHAPTER X
ENTERING A NEW WORLD
“Of course, when I sail away on that glorious yachting party, you’ll come here to live.” That Lorena LeMar, Jeanne’s double, spoke in a matter-of-fact tone made no difference. Jeanne’s heart fluttered.
“Here!” she managed to gasp as her eyes swept the spacious hotel apartment with its glimmer of silver and gold, silk and satin. “Here? I couldn’t!”
“Oh, but you must!” In Lorena LeMar’s tone there was a note of finality. “You couldn’t well live anywhere else. This is the apartment of Lorena LeMar. Every one knows that. This is my address. They call me on the phone here, my company, my friends, my—”
“Your friends!” Jeanne gasped afresh. “Am I to be Lorena LeMar to your friends also? How—how very impossible!”
Jeanne’s head was in a wild whirl. For three days she had haunted the steps of her double, Lorena LeMar. They had been obliged to show great caution. Never had they been where others might see them together. This would have proved fatal to their plans. Nevertheless in out-of-the-way places and in this, Lorena LeMar’s apartment, Jeanne had been privileged to study her famous double until, as she expressed it to Florence, “already I am no more Petite Jeanne, but altogether Lorena LeMar.”
Never until this moment had it occurred to her that if she were to carry off her part she must abandon the shabby comfort of her rooms with Florence and come here to live, nor that Lorena LeMar’s friends must for two weeks be her friends.
“How does Lorena LeMar live?” she asked herself with a sinking heart. “And what do those friends expect of her?”
Little need to ask. Already she knew all too well. Lorena LeMar was an American, city-bred girl, no better and no worse than the average. Slender, vivacious, frank, quite lovable, she lived as those others live. There were dances, late parties, jazz and everything that went with it. Jeanne knew very little of this type of life.
“Your—your friends—” she stammered again.