The joy of finding himself no longer in a tent and of falling back on his pillow was worth the bad dream. Life was one long bad dream to Kedzie. She was guilty whichever way she turned, and afraid of both men.
Jim had a valet to wait on him. He had the problem of selecting his scarf and his socks for the morning. Jim had come into a lot of money. He had been earning a bank clerk's salary, with no way of spending it. And now he had a bank to spend and a plenty of places to throw it.
But it was hard for him to believe that he was a free man again. He was amazed to find Newport without cactus and without a scorpion. He kept looking for a scorpion on his pillow. He found one there, but did not recognize her.
Jim was as much of a parvenu in Newport as Kedzie had ever been. He swept her away at times by his juvenile enthusiasm and she neglected Strathdene atrociously for a week.
A large part of the colony had decamped for New York and Boston and Chicago, but those that remained made a throng for Jim. His mother was not well enough to be moved back to New York, but his sister had reached England safely and he was happy in his luxuries.
But he was the only one that was. His mother was bitter against Kedzie for having fed the gossips. Kedzie was assured that life with Jim had nothing new to offer and she resented him as a barrier between herself and the glory of her future with Strathdene and “the stately homes of England.”
Her mother and father arrived in Newport. Kedzie tried to suppress them for fear that Strathdene might feel that they were the last two back-breaking straws. But she needed a confidante and she told her mother the situation.
Mrs. Thropp, like Kedzie, had an ambition that expanded as fast as opportunity allowed. She was dazzled by the thought of being elevated to the peerage. She supposed it made her a relative of royalty. She who had once dreamed of being neighborly with the great Mrs. Dyckman was now imagining herself exchanging crocheting formulas with Queen Mary. She was saying she had always heard the Queen well spoke of. And Adna Thropp spoke very highly of “George.”
They agreed that it was their sacred duty to place the name of Thropp as high as it could go, cost what it would.
“After all,” said Adna one day, looking up from an article in a Sunday paper—“after all, why ain't Thropp as likely a name as Wettin? Or Hohenzollern? And what was Romanoff but an ordinary family once?”