“Really. You’ll do it then? Sit down a moment while I call up Briggs.”
He called the garage and turned again to Jane. “I’ll dictate some important letters, and be ready for you when you get back.”
Jane, being shown out finally by the elegant Frederick, was again aware of the interest displayed by the fish in the aquarium. She was also aware that the girl in black serge with the white beads had risen, and that Towne was saying, “When I come back you can take my letters, Miss Logan.”
He went all the way down to the first floor of the big building, and Jane and her cheap gray suit were once more under observation, this time by people on the sidewalk, as Briggs and Towne got her into the car. She rode away in great state and elegance. She was not quite sure whether she was really Jane Barnes. It seemed much more likely that she was Cinderella in a coach made out of a pumpkin, and that Briggs had been metamorphosed from a rat. She leaned against the luxury of the fawn-colored cushions, and overlooked the outside world of pedestrians. Until to-day she had been one of them, but now she rode above them—the limousine was like some stately galleon breasting the tides of traffic. Jane’s imagination carried her far. Even when she came to the market the enchantment persisted, especially when Briggs proved to be perfectly human and helpful instead of the automaton she had thought him. “If you don’t mind my going in with you, Miss,” he said, “I’d like it.”
So Jane went through the fine old market, with its long aisles brilliant with the bounty of field and garden, river, and bay and sea. There were red meats and red tomatoes and red apples, oranges that were yellow, and pumpkins a deeper orange. There were shrimps that were pink, and red-snappers a deeper rose. There was the gold of butter and the gold of honey—the green of spinach, the green of olives and the green of pickles in bowls of brine, there was the brown of potatoes overflowing in burlap bags, and the brown of bread baked to crustiness—the brown of the plumage of dead ducks—the white of onions and the white of roses.
Jane bought modestly and Briggs carried her parcels. He even made a suggestion as to the cut of the steak. His father, it seemed, had been a butcher.
They drove back then for Frederick. Briggs went up for him, and returned to say that Mr. Towne would be down in a moment.
Frederick was, as a matter of fact, finishing a letter to Delafield Simms:
“I am assuming that you will get your mail at the Poinciana, but I shall also send a copy to your New York office. Edith has asked me to return the ring to you. I shall hold it until I learn where it may be delivered into your hands.
“As for myself, I can only say this—that my first impulse was to kill you. But perhaps I am too civilized to believe that your death would make things better. You must understand, of course, that you’ve put yourself beyond the pale of decent people.”
Lucy’s pencil wavered—a flush stained her throat and cheeks—then she wrote steadily, as Frederick’s voice continued: