A long chain of days followed, each in every way like the other. One
steady yet lazy wind pulsed from the south; the skies were clad with an
unaltering blue haze from dawn till dark, except that a rosy flush, like
a kind of languid aurora, would steal into the full round of the horizon
with each new sunset, and stay until evening had first empurpled it,
then darkened it completely. Afterward the stars would come forth,
golden, globular, and rayless, while the same unchanged southerly wind
would get a damp sharpness that made at least a light wrap needful if
one remained out of doors. The great piazza would be almost vacant an
hour or so after nightfall, and the whole shore quite lonely. As
regarded all after-dark visitors, the island had virtually closed its
season. But Claire and Hollister haunted the piazza a good deal when the
early autumnal darkness had emptied it of occupants. After they had
dined he would light his cigar, and then select a certain hundred yards
or so of the firm wooden flooring, over which they passed and repassed,
arm-in-arm, more times than perhaps both their healthful young frames
realized. The other guests of the hotel doubtless conjectured that they
were saying all sorts of tender trifles to each other, according to the
immemorial mode of those from whom the honeymoon has not yet withdrawn
her witching spells. But in reality there was very little between them
of what we term lover-like discourse. Claire discouraged it in her
husband, who obeyed the tacit mandate.
She was prosaic and practical on these occasions. It amused and charmed
Hollister to find her so. In any guise that it chose to wear, her
personality was an enchantment. Claire planned just how they were to
live on their return to town, and he thought her irresistible in this
role of domestic anticipation.
"We shall have to find apartments," she told him. "We cannot afford to
rent a house of our own. But apartments are very nice and respectable.
They are quite different from a boarding-house, you know. I should be
very sorry if we were compelled to board."
"So should I," declared Hollister. "Are you sure that we have not enough
to let us rent a small house?"
Claire's eyes glistened, as though the chance of their income being made
to stretch thus far suggested charming possibilities. But she soon gave
a sad shake of the head. "No," she decided. "We should only find
ourselves running into debt. We had better take no rash risks. Your
business is full of them, as it is, Herbert. Besides, a year or two may
make the change easy for us."
She amazed him by the speed with which she learned just how his affairs
stood. Her quick mastery of facts that with most women baffle both
memory and understanding, was no less rare than thorough. It had always
been thus with her. Whatever she wanted to comprehend became her mental
possession after slight and brief effort. It was not long before she
read the price-list of stocks in the morning papers with nearly as
lucid a perception of just what it meant as Hollister himself. She made
her husband explain as well as he could--and this was by no means
ill,--both the theory and practice of Wall Street speculation. She soon
began to know all his important investments, and talk of them with
facile glibness.
Her control over Hollister daily strengthened. She would have swayed a
man of much firmer will, and it is certain that he grew steadily more
deferent to her judgment, her counsel, or even her caprices. The desire
that she so plainly laid bare to him he had already estimated as a most
right and natural development. In his eyes it was touched with no shade
of selfishness; its egotism was to be readily enough condoned; one liked
self-assertion in those whom nature had wrought of finer stature, from
better clay. The queen pined for throne and sceptre; they were a debt
owed her by the world; she could not help being born royal.
It irritated him that those people in the hotel whom she had expressed a
wish to know, should not have sought her acquaintance and society. She
must have struck them as a creature of great beauty and grace. Why had
they not been won into paying her tribute? This was Hollister's fond way
of putting the matter to his own thoughts. A few of these same people
still remained. They formed a little clique among themselves; they, too,
were waiting for the drowsy and torpid weather to wake up and send them
townward. They saw Claire daily, almost hourly, and yet they never
showed a sign of caring to do more than see her. Hollister secretly
resented their indifference. His pride perhaps conspired with his love
in making him bring Claire a fresh supply of flowers every evening, that
she might wear them brilliantly knotted in the bosom of her dress. She
remonstrated with him on the extravagance of this little devoted act,
but for once he overruled her protest by a reference to the cheapness of
flowers at that especial season. She always wore the flowers. Jutting
forth in a rich mass from the delicate symmetry of her breast, they
became her to perfection, as their lovely contact becomes all save the
most ill-favored of women. She allowed Hollister to continue his
pleasant, flattering gift. The mirror in her dressing-room was of
generous proportions.
By day she liked to stroll the shore, or to sit with a book on one of
the many benches, and watch, when not reading, the pale blue sweep of
ocean, smooth as oil, and flecked with a few white-winged ships. Some of
the sails were so faint and far away to the eye that they made her think
of blossoms blown by a random breeze clear out into the misty offing.
But now and then a boat would move past, hugging the shore, and wearing
on its breadth of canvas huge black letters that advertised a soap, a
washing powder or perhaps a quack medicine. The tender poetry in sky or
sea gave these relentless merchantmen (if the term be not inapt) a most
glaring oddity. But Claire did not wholly dislike, after all, the busy
push of life and traffic which they so harshly indicated. If she had
been less capable of understanding just how vulgar a note they struck,
she might have disapproved of them more stoutly. As it was, she accepted
their intrusion with full recognition of its ugliness, yet with a latent
and peculiar sympathy. It reminded her of the vast mercantile city that
lay so near--the city where her young husband was seeking to augment
his gains, and by a process of slight essential difference.
But curiously in contrast with this feeling was Claire's mode of now and
then speaking to the shabby people who frequented the shore, and
repeatedly giving them alms when this or that woful story of want would
meet her ears. Past experiences made her singularly keen in detecting
all the sham tales of beggars. She had learned the real dialect of
poverty, and her sense was quick to perceive any suspicious flaw in its
melancholy syntax. More than once she would engage little dingy-clad
children in converse, and nearly always a coin would be slipped into
their hands at parting. But one day it happened that a child of smart
gear, a little girl about five years old, came up to her side and began
prattling on the subject of a sandy structure which the plump, tiny
hands had just erected, a few yards away. The child had a fat, stupid
face which was shaded by a big, costly-looking hat, along whose brim
coiled a fashionable white plume. Every other detail of her dress
implied wealthy parentage. Her little form exhaled a soft perfume, as of
violets. She looked up into Claire's face with dull, unintelligent eyes,
but with a droll assumption of intimacy, while chattering her fluent
nonsense regarding the product of her recent sportive toil. Claire was
not prepossessed, but at the same time she took the little creature's
hand very socially, and listened to her brisk confidences with amiable
heed.
But a French _bonne_, in a fluted cap, suddenly appeared upon the scene,
and cut short the child's further overtures of friendship by drawing her
away with swift force and a gust of voluble French reprimand. The child
broke into peevish screams, and was at once lifted by the strong arms of
the _bonne_, just as a lady abruptly joined them. The lady shook her
forefinger at the child, while she was being borne away with passionate
clamor.
"Tu as ete tres mechante," exclaimed the new-comer, remaining
stationary, but following with a turn of the head and unrelaxed finger
this tragic departure. "Nous avions peur que tu ne fusses tombee dans la
mer. Tais-toi, Louise, et sois bon enfant!"
Distance soon drowned the lamentations of little Louise, and the lady
now addressed herself to Claire.
"I hope my bad little girl hasn't been troubling you," she said. "It is
really the nurse's fault that she strayed away in this wild style. Aline
is horridly careless. I've already discharged her, and that makes her
more so. Last week at Newport the poor child nearly fell over the cliffs
because of that woman's outrageous neglect."
"Your little girl was in no danger here, I think," said Claire, smiling.
"Oh, no; of course not," returned the lady. She gave Claire a direct,
scanning look, and then dropped upon the bench beside her. "Coney Island
is very different from Newport. We had a cottage there all summer. Do
you know Newport?"
"No," said Claire. "It is a very delightful place, is it not?"
"Well, yes," returned the lady, with a covert dissent in her admission.
"It's nice, but it's awfully stiff."
"Do you mean ceremonious?" asked Claire.
"Yes. I got frightfully tired of it. I always do. My husband likes it,
and so I go on his account. I'd much rather go to Narragansett or Mount
Desert. They're more like real country, don't you know? You haven't got
to button your gloves all the time, and pose your parasol. You're not
bothered with thinking whom you shall know and whom you shan't. You can
let yourself loose. I love to let myself loose. But you can't do it in
Newport. Everybody there is on a kind of high horse. Now I like to come
down, once in a while, and ride a pony."
The lady gave a shrill, short laugh as she ended these words. Claire had
already noted all her personal details. She was tall of figure and
extremely slender. She had a sharp-cut face which would have gained by
not being of so chill a pallor. Her black eyes were full of restless
brilliancy; her lips were thin, and marked at their rims by a narrow
bluish line. She carried herself with an air of importance, but her
manner was very far from the least supercilious display. She promptly
impressed you as a woman whose general definition was a democratic one,
though aristocracy might also be among her minor meanings. She had no
claims to beauty; she was too meagre in point of flesh, too severe in
general contour, too acute in her angles. She lacked all the charm of
feminine curves; she was a living conspiracy of straight lines. You
could not closely observe her without remarking the saliency of her
joints; she seemed put together on a plan of cruel keenness. At the same
time, her motions were not awkward; she managed her rectilinear body
with a surprising ease and pliancy. Her health appeared excellent,
notwithstanding her slim frame and chalky color. The warmth, speed, and
geniality of her speech, evidently springing from high animal spirits,
no doubt enforced this inference.
Claire felt not a little puzzled by her, and had an immediate wish to
find out just who she was. On the afternoon of yesterday she had once or
twice joined the patrician group and had chatted with this or that
member of it, apparently on the most familiar terms. Claire already
knew, having thus observed her, that she was a recent arrival. But past
experiences made it seem quite probable that she was merely a tolerated
nobody. 'Would she join me like this and address me so affably,' Claire
asked herself, 'if she were some one of real note?'
At the same time, any trace of such self-depreciation was far enough
from showing itself in Claire's spoken answer.
"Everything is tiresome, I suppose," she said, "if there is
too great a supply of it. For my own part, I think that I like the
conventionalities, as they are called. I haven't seen enough of them in
my life to be wearied by them. I have known what poverty is in other
years, and now, when I contrast it with the little ceremonies and forms
that accompany prosperity, I find myself rather glad that these exist."
Her companion looked surprised for a moment. She put her thin face
rather close to Claire's. The candor of the latter was a novelty. Claire
had used it with a somewhat subtle intent. Her fleet tact had told her
that it was best frankly to count herself outside of the social pale
behind which she more than suspected that this garrulous matron
belonged.
"Oh, so you've been poor?" came the somewhat rattling response. "But of
course you're not so now, or you wouldn't speak of it. Poverty must be
so perfectly awful. I mean when one is born different from the people
who ... well, don't you know, the people who are in tenement-houses, and
all that." The speaker here paused, while arranging the long
_mousquetaire_ gloves that reached in tawny wrinkles far up either sharp
arm. "Well," she suddenly recommenced, "I dare say I ought to care more
for style and form and fashion. I was brought up right in the midst of
it. All my relations are perfectly devoted to it. They look on me as a
kind of black sheep, don't you know? They say I'm always going into the
highways and hedges to pick up my friends. But I don't mind them; I
laugh at them. They're here now in full force. There are two of the
Hackensacks, and two of the Van Corlears, and two of the Van
Kortlandts--all cousins of mine, more or less removed. I was a Van
Kortlandt before I married. I'm Mrs. Manhattan Diggs, now, and I have
been for five years. The best of the joke is that my husband, whom I
perfectly dote on, by the way, and who's the dearest in all Christendom,
disapproves of me as much as my relations do. The other day he called me
a Red Republican, because I said society in New York was all trash. So
it is trash. It's money, money, and nothing else. When he makes me
dreadfully mad I throw his name at him. _Diggs_, you know. Isn't it
frightful? His mother was a Manhattan--one of the real old stock, and
she married a man by that name--an Englishman with a fortune. If he
hadn't been rich I'd have pitied my poor husband. He'd never have made a
dollar. I tell him that all he can do is to sit in the club-window, and
drive, and bet, and play cards. But he's just as lovely to me as he can
be, so I don't mind. I worship him, and he worships me, so we get on
splendidly together, of course.... And now I've told you my name, you
must tell me yours. I hope it's prettier than mine. It ought to be,
you're so immensely pretty yourself."
"My name is Mrs. Hollister," said Claire. "Mrs. Herbert Hollister. I
have been married only a few weeks."
"A bride! Really? How delightful! Do you actually mean it? I dote on
brides. I'm sure we shall be friends."
They rapidly became so. Claire was by no means averse to the
arrangement. Mrs. Diggs was violent, explosive, precipitate, but she was
not vulgar. Besides, her roots, so to speak, were in the soil that
Claire liked. They lunched together that day at one of the little tables
in the vast, airy dining-room. While they were seated at the meal,
several of the elegant ladies passed on their way toward other tables.
Mrs. Diggs nodded to each of them familiarly, and her nods were
distinctly returned. Claire took special note of this latter point.
"Your relations will think you have deserted them," she said.
Mrs. Diggs laughed. "They think I'm always deserting them," she
exclaimed. "I don't believe my absence is a great affliction; they
manage to endure it.... Oh, by the way, here comes Cousin Cornelia Van
Horn. She must have arrived to-day. Excuse me for a moment. I'll have to
go and speak to her."
Mrs. Diggs hastily rose and went toward a lady who was herself in act of
crossing the room, but who paused on seeing her approach. The meeting
took place not far from where Claire was seated. She saw Mrs. Diggs
give her kinswoman a kiss on each cheek like the quick peck of a bird.
They were cheeks that time had faded a little, but the face to which
they belonged had a haughty loveliness all its own. At least
five-and-thirty years had rounded her figure into soft exuberance,
mellowing but scarcely marring its past harmonies. She was very blonde;
her eyebrows, each a perfect arch, and the plenteous hair worn in a dry,
crisp matwork low over her white forehead, were just saved from too pale
a flaxen by the least yellow tinge. Her features were cut like those of
a cameo, but they were too small and too near together for positive
beauty, while her eyelids had too deep a droop, and her nose, by nature
lifted too high at the extreme tip, lost nothing of the pride, even the
arrogance it bespoke, from the exquisite poise of her head above a long
throat and sloping shoulders. Claire decided that she had never seen a
woman so stately and yet so lightsome, or one who could so clearly
suggest the serenity and repose of great self-esteem without thrusting
its offensive scorn into harsh evidence.
Mrs. Diggs remained with her new companion several minutes. Her severe
back, in all its rather trying outlines, was presented to Claire during
this interval, though once she slightly turned, making a little gesture
with her bony hand that seemed to indicate either the table she had just
quitted or the figure still seated there. And soon afterward Claire saw
that the person whom she had heard named by Mrs. Diggs was looking
steadily at her with a pair of cold, light-blue eyes. While she returned
this look it struck her that a change of color touched the placid face
of her observer, though the flush from faint pink into pink only by a
shade less dim might easily have passed for a trick of deceptive fancy.
Mrs. Diggs presently came trotting back to the table, with her odd
combination of graceful movement and bodily sharpness.
"My dear Mrs. Hollister," she began, while seating herself, "do you know
that Cousin Cornelia knows all about you? I happened to mention your
name before you were married--Miss Twining, wasn't it?"
"Yes," replied Claire.
"Well, the name seemed to strike her, and she at once asked if you had
not stayed quite a long time with Mrs.... Mrs.... Oh, you mentioned her
when you spoke of being here several weeks before your marriage."
"Mrs. Bergemann," said Claire, and immediately added, in tones full of
quiet interest: "Well, Mrs. Diggs?"
"Why, that was what _placed_ you, don't you know, with Cousin Cornelia.
Yes, Mrs. Bergemann; that was the name."
"Did your cousin know Mrs. Bergemann?" inquired Claire.
"She didn't say so. But she appeared to know just who _you_ were. I
think she's going to make me present you. There seems to be some queer
mystery. She acted rather strangely. Are you sure you've never met
before?"
"Yes, I am perfectly sure," answered Claire. "Did you not say that the
lady's name was Van Horn?"
"Cousin Cornelia's? Why, yes; of course it is. She's my second cousin.
She's related on the Van Kortlandt side. She was a Miss Thurston."
"Thurston," repeated Claire, not interrogatively, but as though she had
caught the sound with recognition the instant it left the speaker's
lips. She broke into a smile, now. "That explains everything. She is a
sister of Mr. Beverley Thurston, is she not?"
"Cousin Beverley? Of course she is. Do you know _him_?"
"Oh, yes," said Claire. "I knew him very well."
"Why, you don't tell me so!" blithely exclaimed Mrs. Diggs. "I dote on
Beverley. I suppose he thinks me dreadful, but I dote on him, just the
same. He is so broad, don't you know? He's seen so much, and read so
much, and lived so much, generally. And with it all he's so
conventional. That is the way I like conventionality--when you find it
in some one who makes it a sort of fatigue-dress for liberal views, and
not the uniform of narrow ones."
"I approve your description of Mr. Thurston," said Claire, slowly. "It
tells me how well you know him."
Mrs. Diggs creased her forehead in puzzled style, and bent her face
closer toward Claire's. "What on earth do you suppose it was that made
him dart off so suddenly to Europe?" she asked.
Claire stooped, as though to discover some kind of objectionable speck
in the cup of chocolate that she was stirring, and then removed what she
had found, with much apparent care. "He did go quite unexpectedly, did
he not?" she said, lowering her head still more as she put the speck on
her saucer and examined it with an excellent counterfeit of the way we
regard such things when uncertain if their origin be animal or
vegetable. She wondered to herself, at the same time, whether Mrs. Diggs
would notice her increased color, or whether she herself had merely
imagined that her color had undergone any sort of change. "At some other
time," she went on, letting the words loiter in utterance, with a very
neat simulation of preoccupied attention ... "at some other time, Mrs.
Diggs, I should like to talk more with you about Mrs. Van Horn's
brother. But just now I want to ask you about Mrs. Van Horn herself."
Here Claire briskly raised her head. The problem of the aggressive speck
had seemingly been solved. "I have heard Mr. Thurston mention that he
had a sister of that name," she continued, now speaking with speed, "but
he told me almost nothing regarding her. She appears to be a very
important person."
Mrs. Diggs glanced toward a distant table at which she had already seen
her cousin seat herself. Then she turned to Claire again, as though
confident of how safely remote was the lady whom she at once proceeded
to discuss.
"Cornelia _is_ a very important person, Mrs. Hollister. As I told you,
she's my second cousin. I used to see a good deal of her before I was
married. She's at least ten years older than I am. She brought me out
into society. I was an orphan, don't you know, and there was nobody else
to bring me out. I _had_ to be brought out, for I was eighteen, and all
the rest of the family were either in mourning, or were too old, or else
had gone to Europe, or ... well, something of that sort. So Cornelia
gave me a great ball. It was splendidly civil of her. But I don't think
she did it from the least benevolence. No, not at all. She had ended her
term of widowhood, and wanted to _appear_ again, don't you know? The
ball was magnificent, and it gathered all her old _clientele_ about her.
I remember it so well; it is only eight years ago. I stood at her side,
behind a towering burden of bouquets which it made my wrist ache to
hold. Cornelia was in white satin, with knots of violets all over her
dress. I shall never forget that dress. She wore amethysts round her
throat, and in her hair, and on her arms. It was a kind of jubilant
second-mourning, don't you know? She looked superb; she was eight years
younger than she is now. People gathered about her and paid their court.
She resumed old acquaintances; she received open or whispered
compliments; she was the event of the evening. _I_ was nearly ignored.
And yet it was _my_ ball; it had been given for me, to celebrate my
_debut_ in society. But as the evening progressed I began to discover
that I had been made a mere pretext. Cornelia herself was the real
reason of the ball. She had simply used me as an excuse for reemerging.
She reemerged, by the way, with seventy thousand a year, and a
reputation for having been one of the reigning belles of New York before
she married Winthrop Van Horn. She was poor when she married Winthrop,
and he lived only a few years afterward. He left her every penny of his
money; there were no children. Cornelia was a devoted wife; at least, I
never heard it contradicted, and I've somehow always accepted it. I
think everybody has always accepted it, too. He died of consumption in
Bermuda, and it is usually taken for granted, don't you know, that he
died in Cornelia's arms. For my part, I can't imagine anybody dying in
Cornelia's arms.... But that's neither here nor there. She kept herself
as quiet as a mouse for five years. But mice are nomadic, and they gnaw
everything. And Cornelia, during those five years of bereaved woe, to my
certain knowledge, took a peep at every capital in Europe. After the
ball--the ball that she gave _me_, please understand--she became a great
leader. She's a great leader still. Didn't Beverley tell you _that_,
Mrs. Hollister?"
"No," stated Claire, keenly interested by this nimble monologue. "As I
said, Mr. Thurston scarcely did more than mention his sister's name."
Mrs. Diggs applied herself actively to a fragment of cold chicken, which
she had left neglected through all these elucidating items. Claire
watched her, thinking how clever she was and yet how uncircumspect. With
what slight incentive had been roused this actual whirlwind of family
confidences!
"She perfectly adores Beverley," Mrs. Diggs presently continued. "I have
an idea that she does so because he's a Thurston--or rather because
_she's_ one. She has contrived to make it appear very exceptional to be
a Thurston. The Thurstons have never been anything whatever. Her mother
married into the family, and cast a spell of aristocracy over them. But
Cornelia never alludes to the Van Kortlandt connection. She knows that
can take care of itself. I believe her grandfather, on the other side,
was a saddler. But she has managed to have it seriously disputed whether
he was a saddler or a landed Knickerbocker grandee. The panels of her
carriage bear a Thurston crest. It is a very pretty one; I am quite sure
she invented it. I once told Beverley so, and he laughed. _He_ has
never used it, though he has never denounced it as spurious. The joke is
that she ignores the Van Horn crest entirely, which is the only one she
has any right to air. Cornelia is a great leader, as I said. She has
Thursday evenings in the big old house on Washington Square which her
late husband left her. Lots of people have struggled to go to Cornelia's
Thursdays, and not gone, after all. It's absolutely funny to observe
what a vogue she has got. She could make anybody whom she chose to take
up a social somebody by merely lifting her finger. But she never lifts
her finger. That is why she is so run after. You can't get her to use
the power she possesses. It yearly grows more of a power, don't you
know, on this very account. It's like a big deposit in a bank, that gets
bigger through lying there untouched. She won't spend a penny; she lets
it grow. The women of New York are becoming a good deal less flippant,
some of them, than they used to be. Clubs and receptions have come into
fashion, where intellectual matters are seriously, even capably
discussed. Somebody will read a paper on something sensible and
literary, and a little debate will follow. At one of these
clubs--composed strictly of women--it is forbidden to mention the last
ball, though this may have occurred on the preceding night and everybody
may have seen everybody else there, talking the usual gay nonsense. The
whole thing is a kind of 'movement,' don't you know? It's very
picturesque and it's extremely in earnest. It makes one think a little
of the old historical French _salons_. It has laid bare some charming
and surprising discoveries. It has shown how many women have been
reading and thinking in secret, during those long intervals of leisure
that have occurred between their opportunities for being publicly silly,
inane, flirtatious, and hence of correct form. On the other hand it has
led certain women to cultivate their minds as they would a new style of
dressing their hair. All that we used to satirize in former
entertainments of this kind fails to exist in those I am describing.
Pipe-stem curls and blue spectacles are replaced by the most Parisian
felicities of costume. A delightful-looking creature in a Worth dress
that fits her like a glove will give us her 'views' on the Irish
land-question or the persecution of the Jews in Russia.... And now I
come to the real object of my digression, as the long-winded orators
say. Cornelia Van Horn frowns upon all this. She has gathered about her
a little faction, too, which frowns obediently in her defense. You must
not fancy for a moment that Cornelia could not shine in these assemblies
if she chose to favor them. She has brains enough to _out_shine nearly
all their supporters. But she condemns the intellectual tendency in
women when thus openly exhibited. If they want to read and think, they
should do it in the quiet of their closets, and in the same way that
they write their letters, or glance over their accounts, or distribute
their household orders. There is no objection to philosophy, science,
belles-lettres, so long as these are not made to interfere with the
general dignified commonplace of the higher social life. To be
individual, argumentative, reformatory, is to be professional. To be
professional is not to be 'good form.' The moment that a drawing-room is
made to resemble a lecture-room or a seminary it becomes odious from a
patrician stand-point. Only queens and duchesses can afford to paint
pictures or to write books, without loss of caste. A consistent
aristocracy never discovers new ideas; it accepts old ones. Agitators
are the enemies of repose, and repose is the soul of refinement."
Here Mrs. Diggs gave a gleeful trill of laughter that made Claire
compare it to her mind as well as her person; it was so clear and sharp.
"Oh, you can't imagine," she went on, "how radical Cornelia is in her
positively feudal conservatisms. I'm so liberal, don't you know, that I
can appreciate her narrowness. I relish it as one does a delicious joke.
But it's a very curious sort of bigotry. There's nothing in the least
spontaneous about it. I've a conviction that she sweeps her eye more
widely over this fine Nineteenth Century than any of the ladies I've
been telling you about. She has seen that she can only reign on one kind
of a throne, and she sticks there. And I assure you, there isn't the
least doubt that she reigns in good earnest.... I'm surprised that
Beverley Thurston didn't tell you about her. Beverley has got her
measure so exactly. He thinks me dreadful, as I said, but he's fond of
me. I'm sure we always amuse each other."
"No," said Claire, shaking her head slowly, "he was very reticent on
that subject. Perhaps he thought I might want to know her if he painted
her portrait as you have done. That would have been awkward for him,
provided his sister had declined my acquaintance. And I dare say she
would have declined it, as I was not in her exclusive circle."
Mrs. Diggs put her head a little on one side. She was looking at Claire
intently. A smile played like a faint flicker of light on her thin lips,
whose two bluish lines always kept the same tinge.
"Why are you so candid with me?" she asked.
"Candid?" repeated Claire.
"Yes. Why do you show me that you would like to know Cornelia Van Horn?"
"Why?" still repeated Claire. "Did I show you that?"
"Not openly--not in so many words, don't you know? But I imagine it."
"You are very quick at imagining," said Claire, with a little playful
toss of the head. "Well, if you choose, I _should_ like to know her. I
should like to know any one who ranks herself high, like that, and has a
recognized claim. I have a fellow-feeling for ambitious people. I'm
ambitious myself."
Mrs. Diggs seemed deeply amused. She lifted a forefinger, and shook it
at Claire.
"I'm afraid you're _very_ ambitious," she said.
"Well, I am," admitted Claire, not knowing how much rosy and dimpled
charm her face had got while she spoke the words. "I am quite willing to
concede that I have aims, projects, intentions."
Mrs. Diggs threw back her head, and laughed noisily. But she lowered her
voice to a key much graver than her laugh, as she said:--
"You're as clever as Cornelia, in your way. Yes, you are. I shouldn't be
surprised if you were a good deal cleverer, too. I suspect there's a
nice stock of discreet reserve under your candor."
Claire creased her brows in a slightly piqued manner. "That is not very
pleasant to hear," she said.
Mrs. Diggs stretched out her hand across the table so pointedly and
cordially that Claire felt forced to take it.
"I like you. You interest me. Forgive me if I've annoyed you."
"You haven't annoyed me," was Claire's reply.
"I want to see those aims, projects, intentions," Mrs. Diggs continued,
still holding her hand, and warmly pressing it besides. "Yes, I want to
see you _exploiter_ them--carry them out. You shall do it, if I can help
you. And you will _let_ me help you, I hope? You won't think me
disagreeably patronizing, will you? I only speak in this way because
I've taken a desperate fancy to you."
"Thanks," said Claire. Her eyes were sparkling; her heart was beating
quickly.