“And who knows but he may make a rich catch?” she even whispered to herself.
It was a reversal of things, she knew, this exploiting of a man, but then the very uniqueness of the process added zest to it for this woman whose nature craved excitement of this sort above all other things.
When Radnor’s train came in she walked across the road to the station to meet him. She had seen to it that he took the express, which would bring him to Lorimac just before the supper hour, when everybody was on the piazzas, looking out for the new arrivals.
“You are very welcome, Radnor,” she said, when he came up to her amid the crowd.
She gave him both her hands, forcing him to drop his valise while he took them for a moment. Then they walked across to the hotel together, and while he registered, Mrs. Barnes tapped her jeweled fingers together and glanced half carelessly around the great office, with its big fire place in one corner and the many groups scattered about. And she saw in that apparently casual glance all she wanted, and knew that the first impression Radnor had made was an extremely favorable one.
That evening, however, she introduced him to no one. They sat together in a remote corner of the piazza, talking over old times, the future, the walks and drives around Lorimac.
Radnor said but very little. It was not necessary. His cousin was fond of talking, and she certainly found Radnor a most attentive listener. The only fault she had to find with him was that he did not ask questions enough. There were dozens of pretty girls in the dining room at supper time, in a few of whom it might be supposed he would have some little interest. But he always allowed Camilla to speak of them first, except in one instance, and then he asked about a young lady whom she did not know and had not observed.
“She came up on the train with me,” Radnor explained then, and Mrs. Barnes made a resolve to find out the entire facts about the new comer before she went to sleep that night.
This was not difficult to do. Pleading fatigue from his journey, Radnor went to his room before ten, leaving his cousin to join a group of ladies who each evening occupied the same corner of the drawing room, and gossiped—gossiped of all that went on before their eyes, and of much else that never went on at all, with indefatigable zeal.
“Oh, didn’t you see her?” exclaimed Mrs. General Barentham when Mrs. Barnes mentioned the matter. “Ah, of course, you were absorbed in that charming cousin of yours. I trust you are not going to make a practice of keeping him entirely to yourself. But about Miss Bellman; you must have heard of her coming. She is that New York girl who is so immensely wealthy in her own right, and with it all is so sublimely beautiful. Did you ever, Mrs. Penford, see more exquisite coloring?”