Ladies Must Live | Page 5

thing to your friend Mrs. Almar, because hers are not artificial, though I have heard her assert sometimes that they are," and turning back to Hickson, who was laboriously trying to carry on a conversation with his host, she interrupted ruthlessly to say, hardly lowering her voice:
"Why in the world, Ned, did Nancy bring this Wickham man here? He's perfectly impossible."
"Nancy didn't bring him," answered her brother innocently. "I motored out with her myself."
"She said she wouldn't come unless he were asked. Still I know the answer. Nancy has always had a weakness for blond boys, and last week she was crazy about this one. Now she has turned against him, she wants to foist him off on us, but I for one don't intend to help her out--"
By this time Wickham, aware that he had been rebuffed, had found an explanation for it. The girl was annoyed at having been forced to admit her pearls were imitation. He decided to put everything right.
"Miss Fenimer," he said, and she turned her head perhaps half an inch in his direction, "I think you misunderstood me just now. My standards are probably different from those of the men you are accustomed to. To me the fact that your pearls are not real is an added beauty. I'm glad they're not--"
"Thank you," said Christine, "but I'm not." And this time he understood that he had lost her for good.
After dinner, Mrs. Almar, knowing that her innings were over, very effectively prevented Christine having hers, by insisting on playing bridge. She had an excellent head for cards, and always needed money. Christine allowed herself to be drawn in, supposing that Riatt would be one of the players, and found herself seated opposite to Hickson and next to Jack Ussher.
Wickham, feeling very much left out and desirous of showing how well accustomed he was to the casual manners of polite society, consoled himself with an evening paper. Laura Ussher led Riatt to a comfortable corner out of earshot of the bridge-table.
"Now do tell me, Max," she said, "what you think of them all."
"I think, my dear Laura," he answered, "that they are a very playful band of cut-throats, and next time you ask me to stay, I hope you and Jack will be entirely alone."
* * * * *
The servants in a household like the Usshers' were subjected to almost every strain, except that of early rising. No one dreamed of coming down stairs before eleven, and most people not until lunch time.
The next morning Riatt was among the first--that is to say he was up early enough not to be able to escape a tour of inspection of the place under the guidance of his host. He had seen the stables and the new garage, and the sheet of snow beneath which lay the garden, and the other totally different sheet of snow beneath which was the soil in which Ussher intended next summer to plant a rose garden. He had gone over, tree by tree, the plantation of firs, and had noted how the tips of some were injured, and had given his opinion as to whether or not it were likely that deer had stolen down from the wild country near at hand and nibbled the young firs in the night.
"It's perfectly possible," said Ussher. "I have five hundred acres myself, and then the Club owns a huge tract, and then there's some state land. You see we have hardly any neighbors except the Fenimers and they're eight or nine miles away."
"They live here?"
"In summer--and then only when Fred Fenimer is in funds, and that's not often. A precarious sort of existence, his--gambling in mining stocks, almost always in wrong. Hard on the daughter--wish some nice fellow would come along and marry her."
"He probably will," answered Riatt rather coldly. "It's beginning to snow again."
Ussher had just had his pond swept so that his guests could skate, and now couldn't imagine what he should provide for them for the afternoon, so that his thoughts were instantly and completely turned from Christine's problems to his own.
At the house they found every one waiting for lunch; Mrs. Almar and Christine chattering together on a window-seat as if they were the most intimate allies; Hickson reading his fourth morning paper, and Mrs. Ussher paying the profoundest attention to something Wickham was saying. She had suddenly wakened to the fact that he was having a wretched time and that he was after all her guest. But he interpreted her actions differently, and supposing that he was at last being appreciated, he had launched fearlessly forth upon the conversational sea. It was this spectacle that had drawn Christine and Nancy together, in their whisperings and giggles in the window.
"This perhaps will illustrate my meaning," he was saying rather