At the door of the Parmenter house she did not raise her eyes to his, but her strong young hand clung within his fingers in a fluttering clasp.
"Good-bye, Cary, dear."
"God keep you, my darling."
She had to grope her way in past the astonished maid who opened the door.
CHAPTER XX
"Wisdom may be where you are, dear and lost one." So wrote Robert Osterhout, seated in Mona Fentriss's sun-impregnated room, which seemed still to be fragrant of her personality. "Certainly it is not here. All of us had the sorriest misgivings over Dee's marriage, and behold, it has turned out better than most matrimonial arrangements of this ill-assorted world. They have been married for nearly six months and all goes as smooth as machinery. One could not say that Dee is rapturous; but she is not a rapturous person. She seems to run evenly in double harness with James and makes an admirable mistress for his establishment. I wish I could really like James. If he makes Dee happy I shall have to like him. But he is so infernally self-content. And equally content with Dee, evidently considering her a part and portion of himself. Absorptive—that is what Jameson James is.
"I should have been equally skeptical of Pat's management of Holiday Knoll. Another instance of the fallibility of human judgments, for she runs the place excellently, as even Ralph, who prophesied a hurrah's nest from which he would have to take refuge at the club, now admits. I dare say the bills are something to shudder at.
"Connie also has a new occupation: another baby coming. At first she was querulous; now she is quite taken up with the idea. And the extraordinary Pat has seized upon this to bring Connie and Fred together again. Fred is cutting down on the bottle and showing interest in business. Connie has quit her nonsense with Emslie Selfridge; it was only a make-shift, stop-gap sort of flirtation, anyway; the marriage may yet be a success. If it is, credit to Pat. But imagine the Bambina becoming the managing director of the family, the schemer for happiness, the adjuster of difficulties. She bosses Ralph within an inch of his life. All of this does not seem to interfere with her raids upon the male portion of the community, who clutter up the place largely.