say that because you think I’m spiteful and envious? Yes—I was envious of Lady Ulrica.... Oh, not on account of you or Jimmy Brance! Simply because she had almost all the things I’ve always wanted: clothes and fun and motors, and admiration and yachting and Paris—why, Paris alone would be enough!—And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort of thing about her day after day, and never wonder why some women, who don’t seem to have any more right to it, have it all tumbled into their laps, while others are writing dinner invitations, and straightening out accounts, and copying visiting lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their sulphur? One looks in one’s glass, after all!”
She launched the closing words at him on a cry that lifted them above the petulance of vanity; but his sense of her words was lost in the surprise of her face. Under the flying clouds of her excitement it was no longer a shallow flower-cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that might give back strange depths of feeling. The girl had stuff in her—he saw it; and she seemed to catch the perception in his eyes.
“That’s the kind of education I got at Mrs. Murrett’s—and I never had any other,” she said with a shrug.
“Good Lord—were you there so long?”
“Five years. I stuck it out longer than any of the others.” She spoke as though it were something to be proud of.
“Well, thank God you’re out of it now!”
Again a just perceptible shadow crossed her face. “Yes—I’m out of it now fast enough.”
“And what—if I may ask—are you doing next?”
She brooded a moment behind drooped lids; then, with a touch of hauteur: “I’m going to Paris: to study for the stage.”
“The stage?” Darrow stared at her, dismayed. All his confused contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at this announcement; and to hide his surprise he added lightly: “Ah—then you will have Paris, after all!”
“Hardly Lady Ulrica’s Paris. It’s not likely to be roses, roses all the way.”
Prev.
Back
Top