The Golden Vanity Read Online Free

with some other emotion below her astonishment. An elopement! And with a poor girl... She'd never heard that . . . Mrs. Perry rambled on: "Dear Charlotte forgave them at once, insisted they should live with her. That was how it happened Arthur was left in her care when they sailed. Lucia, Arthur's mother, was to be presented at Court. Dear Charlotte has never been abroad since. Such a frightful shock. She sold her yacht. She has devoted herself to Arthur." Mrs. Perry's total lack of a sense of proportion sometimes made her narrative difficult to follow. "Of course, Arthur was too young to understand—"
    "What is Arthur too young to understand?" Polly interrupted gaily. "Please introduce me, Aunt Annabel." She smiled graciously at Gina.
    "Me too," Sam Reynolds put in. He actually resembled a hard-boiled egg, being bald and smooth-featured and curvilinear, with barely perceptible eyebrows and a slightly malicious grin. He was Mrs. Perry's brother-in-law. "Is Arthur up to anything, the young hellion? Then why isn't he? Ought to be ashamed of himself, mooching over a lot of old books, and the world full of women."
    "I'm sure," Mrs. Perry exclaimed, "Arthur never thinks of women."
    Sam found an unholy entertainment in the answers he provoked from Annabel. "He's not blind, deaf, dumb and paralyzed, is he? What ails Arthur, he's one of those bashful boys, waiting for some wild woman to drag him off screaming. I'm like that myself."
    "You!" Polly said.
    "Sure," Sam maintained. "I'm waiting right now for Mrs. Fuller to drag me off for this dance."
    "Don't," Polly warned Gina. "It's enough to blast any woman's reputation to be seen speaking to him."
    "I—I'm not dancing," Gina protested. But with his arm about her waist, she was obliged to accede. He danced well, and she cast about vainly for a pretext to stop. When the music ceased, they were by the conservatory. He said: "Let's see if the best rubber plants are taken. All this necking I hear about has got to be investigated." She tried to disengage herself. "Are you one of those bigoted married women?" he asked reproachfully.
    "I'm not married," she retorted, furious to the verge of absurdity.
    "I'm sorry; I thought Polly said Mrs. Fuller." He remembered; she must be Charlotte's new lady-in-waiting. "It's just my way of making myself agreeable. So many women get mad if you don't insult 'em. . . . Where do you want to go?"
    She walked blindly through the nearest door, refusing to speak or look at him again. The exit led to the hall -and stairway. "The library?" Sam said. "Good idea. Mind what I told you; it's the truth; the first determined woman that goes after him will get him."
    What a horrible man! She hated Mrs. Brant too. Since he had mentioned it, she certainly would not go to the library. It was at the head of the stairs. The house was so large, she didn't know it thoroughly yet . . . She had not been in this room before. It was quiet, a cloistral atmosphere. Tall pointed windows, and a round green-shaded lamp on a long table. She sat down in a carved high-backed chair to get her breath. Not till then did she observe that the walls were lined with glazed bookshelves. It was Arthur's study, which held his collection of rare books. It opened off the library, at the back. The intervening door was slightly ajar. . . . Men's voices were audible, muted, through the narrow aperture. . . .
    The ex-ambassador was saying that our prestige abroad suffered enormously from the lack of proper embassy quarters. The government should buy suitable buildings. Julius Dickerson's unctuous tones affirmed that Europe looked to America for leadership. Another voice regretted that the best people, young men of education and family, with independent means, did not enter politics. . .. Coolidge was a safe executive. A business administration meant prosperity ...
    This intellectual exchange soothed and impressed Gina. This was how people should talk. The voices had a padded, luxurious sound. Each