Ladies Must Live | Page 2

her throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, "but I'll tell them you say so, if you like."
She was as good as her word--she usually was.
When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without the slightest change of expression:
"Would any one like to hear Roland's explanation of why he is not with us?"
"Had it anything to do with his not being asked?" said a pale young man; and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to ascertain how his remark had succeeded.
So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact, though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she made no secret of the fact.
"Not asked, Mr. Wickham!" she said. "I assume my husband is asked wherever I am," and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint smile: "One's husband is always asked, isn't he?"
"Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come," said another speaker.
This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was blond and some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that she was the beauty of the hour.
She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the truth of the observation that a married woman's greatest charm is her husband, he is also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs. Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the unmarried.
She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the party was understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had discovered a cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from a technical college, had invented a process in the manufacture of rubber that had brought him a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs. Almar admired.
Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a good-looking young man.
In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the little public that really mattered, the lists were set. Nobody present, except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously ignorant of the world in which he was moving, doubted for one moment that Miss Fenimer had resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that is, he turned out to be actually as per the recommendations of Mrs. Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs. Almar intended that he should be hers.
Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical Nancy was her friend, too.
Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson, her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man--exactly the type you would like to see your rival marry. Hickson had motored out with his sister, and had received some excellent counsel on the way.
"Now, Ned," she had said, "don't cut your own throat by being an adoring foil. Don't let Christine grind your face in the dust, just to show this new man that