She shook her head. It wasn’t that. What it was she didn’t feel capable of telling him now.
She wiped her eyes and cheeks recklessly with his handkerchief. Her make-up was ruined, and for the moment she didn’t care, but presently at the sight of the well-filled restaurant she pulled herself together, and while Eric ordered dinner she busied herself repairing her haggard mask. No matter how badly Connie was looking, people always observed that she was a woman who had once been very beautiful. She joined him at the table in a few minutes, looking as though tears were as foreign to her nature as to a statue’s.
It is characteristic of Connie’s sort that they forget they have made a scene two minutes after it is over, and imagine that others forget as easily. She glanced about the crowded room as she sat down, hoping that she might be seen in the company of such a man. She was proud of him, and, to do her justice, proud of the fact that they were brother and sister, forgetting that in twenty years a resemblance that had once been remarkable had nearly vanished.
Before dinner was over, she had given him an outline of her life down to the present with commendable honesty. She had no wish, apparently, to gild the ugly sordidness of some of it, though she made it appear that her misfortunes had come to her more through the faithlessness and selfishness of men than through her own weakness. And yet men, it was obvious, were still her chief interest in life. As she talked to Eric her glance often wandered, and she made much play with her still beautiful hands.
Her dread of Chiozzi and his treatment of her seemed to Eric the most important part of her story. It was that he had to deal with now. She said he had threatened her life more than once in order to extort money from her. Her income had dwindled to barely seven hundred a year, all that remained of the considerable fortune left her by Morton Freeman. That much she had managed to keep intact, in spite of the efforts of her greedy Count.
“If I go back to him,” she said with a shudder, “he’ll have it all.”
Eric dreaded the idea of a divorce. Her affairs had already had so much unsavory publicity.
“You must not think of going back to him at present,” he told her. “Later we will see what can be done. You can write to him from London, if you wish.”
“I dread London.”
“You will be safest there. And you will find that people have forgotten. You must try to begin again, my dear, and be content with contentment, and simple things. You will not find life exciting, but you may find it pleasant. I will do what I can, and you will have mother, who is a marvel of marvels. I would suggest a little house in the country, or a small flat in town.”