“Clever of you,” approved the girl. “The more you try to keep out, the more eager the papers are to print your picture. They’re crazy over exclusiveness,” she laughed.
“Speculation, pro and con, as to who is going to marry whom, and who is about to divorce whom, and whether Miss Welland’s engagement to Mr. Eyre is authentic, ‘as announced exclusively in this column’—more exclusiveness—; or whether—”
“It wasn’t Del Eyre that I came out here to marry.”
“No?”
“No. It’s Carter Holmesley. Of course you know about him.”
“By advertisement, also; the society-column kind.”
“Really, you know, he couldn’t keep out of the papers. He hates it with all his British soul. But being what he is, a prospective duke, an international poloist, and all that sort of thing, the reporters naturally swarm to him. Columns and columns; more pictures than a popular danseuse. And all without his lifting his hand.”
“Une mariage de reclame,” observed Miss Van Arsdale. “Is it that that constitutes his charm for you?”
Miss Van Arsdale’s smile was still instinct with mockery, but there had crept into it a quality of indulgence.
“No,” answered the girl. Her face became thoughtful and serious. “It’s something else. He—he carried me off my feet from the moment I met him. He was drunk, too, that first time. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him cold sober. But it’s a joyous kind of intoxication; vine-leaves and Bacchus and that sort of thing ‘weave a circle ‘round him thrice’—you know. It is honey-dew and the milk of Paradise to him.” She laughed nervously. “And charm! It’s in the very air about him. He can make me follow his lead like a little curly poodle when I’m with him.”