The Coast of Chance | Page 6

only waiting an
opportunity to take farewell, took on, in the light of her look, the
fantastic appearance of a final departure. "I'm afraid," she mildly
reminded them, "that Shima announced the carriage ten minutes ago."
"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!" Flora's eyes wavered apologetically in the
direction of the waiting Japanese. Clara's flicker of amusement made
her hate herself the moment it was out. She could always depend on
herself when she knew she was on exhibition. She could be sure of the
right thing if it were only large enough, but she was still caught at odd
moments by the trifles, the web of a certain social habit into which she

had slipped, full grown on the smooth surface of her father's millions.
Clara's fleeting smile lit up these trifles to her now as enormous. It took
advantage of her small deficit to point out to her more plainly than ever
to what large blunders she might be liable when she had cut loose from
Clara's guiding, reminding, prompting genius, and chose to confront the
world without it.
To be sure, she was not to confront it alone; but, looking at Harry, it
came to her with a moment's qualm that she did not know him as well
as she had thought.

II
A NAME GOES ROUND A TABLE
For to-night, from the moment he had appeared, she had recognized an
unfamiliar mood in him, and it had come out more the more they had
discussed the Chatworth ring. It was not in any special word or action
on his part. It was in his whole presence that she felt the difference, as
if the afternoon's scandal had been a stimulant to him--not through its
romantic aspect, as it had affected her, but merely by the daring of the
theft itself.
She wondered, as he heaped her ermine on her shoulders, if Harry
might not have more surprises for her than she had supposed. Perhaps
she had taken him too much for granted. After all, she had known him
only for a year.
She herself was but three years old in San Francisco, and to her new
eyes Harry had seemed an old resident thoroughly established. So
firmly established was he in his bachelor quarters, in his clubs, in the
demands made upon him by the city's society, that it had never
occurred to her he had ever lived anywhere else. Nor had he happened
to mention anything of his previous life until to-night, when he had
given her, in that mention of a London ball, one flashing glimpse of
former experiences.

Impulsively she summed up the possibilities of what these might have
been. She gave him a look, incredulous, delighted, as he handed her
into the carriage. She had actually got a thrill out of easy-going,
matter-of-fact, well-tubbed Harry! It was a comradeship in itself. Not
that she would have told him. This capacity of hers for thrills she had
found need always to keep carefully covered. In the days when she was
a shoeless child--those days of her father's labor in shaft and dump--she
had dimly felt her world to be a creature of a keen, a fairly cruel humor,
for all things that did not pertain to the essence of the life it struggled
for. The wonder of the western flare of day, the magic in the white eyes
of the stars before sunrise, the mystery in the pulse of the pounding
mine heard in the dark--of such it had been as ruthless as this new
world that looked as narrowly forth at as starved a prospect with even
keener ridicule. Instinctively she had turned to both the hard, bright
face they required. It seemed that in the world at large this faculty of
hers was queer. And to be queer, to have anything that other people had
not, except money, was to be open to suspicion. And yet from the first
she had had to be queer.
Fatherless, motherless, alone upon the pinnacle of her fortune, she had
known that such an extraordinary entrance, even at this rather wide
social portal, would only be acceptable if toned down, glossed over,
and drawn out by a personality sufficiently neutral, sufficiently potent,
and sufficiently in need of what she had to give. The successive flickers
of the gas-lamps through the carriage window made of Clara's profile
so hard and fine a little medallion that it was impossible to conceive it
in need of anything. And yet it was just their mutual need that had
drawn these two women together, and after three years it was still the
only thing that held them. As much of a fight as she had put up with the
rest--the people who had taken her in--she had put up the hardest with