The Avalanche | Page 7

she looked as if an infuriated maid had left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation in cheating them.
It was evident to Price that she had been snubbing somebody, for a group of matrons, flushed and drawn apart, were whispering resentfully. Price Ruyler stood in no awe of her. He could match her arrogance, and he liked and admired her more than any of his new friends. They quarreled furiously but she had never snubbed him.
He walked over to her, his cool gray eyes lit with the pleasure in seeing her that she had learned to expect. "Good evening, oh, Queen of the Pacific," he said lightly. "You are looking quite wonderful as usual. Are you standing alone almost in the middle of the room to emphasize the--difference?"
"I am in no mood for compliments, satiric or otherwise." She looked him over with cool penetration. "I may not massage or have my old cuticle ripped off. If I choose to look my age you must admit that it gives me one more claim to originality."
"You should have let the world know long since just how original you are, instead of settling down into the leadership of San Francisco society--"
He enjoyed provoking her. Her dark narrow eyes opened and flashed as they must have done in their unchastened youth. "Don't dare call me the leader of this--this!"
"Granted. But the fact remains that your word alone is law. Therefore I am about to ask you to forget that I am a bungling diplomat and do a kind act. For once you would be able to be both kind and original."
"I did not know you went in for charities. I am sick of shelling out."
"My only part in charities is shelling out."
"Well, come to the point. What do you want?"
"I want you to go over to that lady--Madame Delano, her name is--sitting beside that beautiful girl, and introduce yourself and then me. They are strangers and I'd like to give them a good time."
"How disinterested of you!" She looked the isolated couple over. "The girl is all right, but I don't like the mother. She is well dressed--oh, correct from tip to toe--but not quite the lady."
Ruyler's cool insolent gaze swept the dado of amiable overfed ladies who fanned themselves against the wall.
"None of that! You know that I do not tolerate the New York attitude. At least we know who ours are; they came into their own respectably, and with no uncertain touch. Of course it is stupid of them to get fat. Naturally it makes them look bourgeoise. But this is a lazy climate. As to that woman: there is something about her I do not like. She is aggressively not massaged, not made up. Only a woman of assured position can afford to be mid-Victorian. It is now quite the smart thing to make up."
"No doubt her position is assured in her own provincial town. It will be easy enough to drop her if she doesn't go down. You can't deny that the girl is all right--and a sweet pathetic figure."
"If the girl marries one of our boys--and no doubt that is what she was brought here for--we shall not be able to get rid of the mother. We've tried that and failed."
At that moment Ruyler's eyes met those of the girl. They flashed an irresistible appeal. He drew a short breath. How different she looked! She radiated a subtle promise of perfect companionship. Price Ruyler did what all men will do until the end of time. He made up his mind that he had found his woman and without vocal assistance.
Mrs. Thornton, who had been watching the unusual mobility of his face, met his eyes with a satirical smile in her own, her thin red curling lips drawn almost straight for a moment. She had played with the fancy, before anger banished it, that if she had been twenty years younger.... Men had fallen madly in love with her in her own day.... She detected the symptoms in this man at once. Her savage will compelled her to accept accumulating years without a concession. But she had forgotten nothing.
Ruyler may have read her thoughts.
"You know," he said, with an attempt at lightness, although the coast wind tan, which was his only claim to coloring, had paled a little, "that girl reminds me so much of you that I have made up my mind to marry her. I don't care who she is. If you don't help me to meet her conventionally I'll manage somehow, but I should