“That’s just the trouble—you can never tell about men!”
I noted a date on the picture. “He seems to be an old friend. You never told me about him.”
“He doesn’t like being told about. He has a troublesome wife.”
I winced inwardly, but all I said was, “I see.”
“He’s a stock-broker; and he got ‘squeezed,’ so he says, and it’s made him cross—and careful with his money, too. That’s trying, in a stock-broker, you must admit.” She laughed. “And still he’s just as particular—wants to have his own way in everything, wants to say whom I shall know and where I shall go. I said, ‘I have all the inconveniences of matrimony, and none of the advantages.’”
I made some remark upon the subject of the emancipation of woman; and Claire, who was now leaning back in her chair, combing out her long black tresses, smiled at me out of half-closed eyelids. “Guess whom he’s objecting to!” she said. And when I pronounced it impossible, she looked portentous. “There are bigger fish in the sea than Larry Edgewater!”
“And you’ve hooked one?” I asked, innocently.
“Well, I don’t mean to give up all my friends.”
I went on casually to talk about my plans for the summer; and a few minutes later, after a lull—“By the way,” remarked Claire, “Douglas van Tuiver is in town.”
“How do you know?”