yet.”
“So much for the women,” I said. “Now tell me of your men.”
“Well, you know my husband. He’s distinguished-looking, isn’t he? And though he’s nearly sixty, that little alert air of his makes him seem younger. Morland looks like him, but they are not at all alike otherwise. Morland is handsome but he is puffy-minded, and any woman can lead him by a string. For the moment, he thinks Mrs. Stelton is his ideal, but I intend that Beth Fordyce shall dethrone her. That tall man talking to Beth now is Connie Archer. He’s a dear thing, but a little difficult. Mr. Van Wyck doesn’t like him; but, then, my husband likes so few people.”
“Do you like Mr. Archer?” I asked, looking directly at her.
She flashed me a glance of surprise, and then answered coolly, “I like him, but not as much as he likes me.”
“Anne Mansfield Van Wyck,” I said, looking at her sternly, “don’t tell me you’ve developed into a coquette!”
“Developed!” she repeated, with a gay little laugh; “I was always a coquette. I used to flirt with you, ’way back in High School Days.”
“That you did!” I agreed. “You purposely kept Jim Lucas and me in a fever of jealousy toward one another!”
“Of course I did. You were both so susceptible. If I let one of you carry my schoolbooks, the other promptly went off in a sulk.” Anne laughed merrily at the recollection, and I gazed at her, thinking how beautiful she had grown, and wondering why she had married Van Wyck.
“And do you remember,” I went on, a little diffidently, “the last time we met?”
“’Deed I do!” she replied, without a trace of embarrassment “You were going off to college, and you kissed my hand as we parted. That was a very graceful act,—for a school-boy,—and I’ve never forgotten how well you did it.”
“Yes,” said I, lightly, “one must be a born cavalier to get away with a hand-kiss successfully. When I get a real good chance I’m going to see if your right hand has lost its cunning.”
“Nonsense!” she returned laughingly. “I’m not allowed to permit anything of that sort I’m a perfect Griselda of a wife and my husband rules me with a rod of iron.”
“Indeed I do,” said Van Wyck himself, as he came toward us, and, really, Anne’s speech had been made at him rather than to me.
“And so you knew my wife as a child?” he asked, after Anne had conventionally introduced us.
“As a girl,” I corrected him. “We were acquainted during our High School days, when I was an awkward cub, and she was ‘standing with reluctant feet.’ ”
“H’m; and was she then, as now, a self-willed, insistent creature, determined to have her own way in everything?”
My blood boiled at his tone, even more than at his words. But I felt sure it was better to keep to the light key, so I said: “Yes, indeed; like all other women. And even as boys, we men are only too glad to give the Blessed Sex their own way.”
Anne flashed me a glance that distinctly betokened approval. I felt she had wondered how I would meet her husband’s ill-chosen speech, and I felt an elation at having passed through the ordeal successfully in her eyes.
David Van Wyck glowered at me. As Anne had said, he was distinguished-looking, but his drawn brows, and straight, thin lips, showed habitual surliness. His thick, tossing hair was almost white, and his acutely black eyes gleamed from beneath heavy gray eyebrows. He was tall and well-proportioned, with an alert air that made him seem less than the sixty years his wife had ascribed to him.
He was handsome; his manners, though superficial, were correct; and yet he roused in me a spirit of antagonism such as no stranger ever had done before. After a few moments more conversation, he said, quite abruptly, “I will take your place beside my wife, and do you go and make yourself charming to the other ladies.”
Chapter II.
The Van Wyck Household
“Presently,” I returned equably; “but first let me congratulate you on the find of this delightful old place. This room itself is a marvel. It might have been brought over from some English castle.”
David Van Wyck looked around appreciatively. “It is a fine room,” he agreed. “It was built later than the main house, and was originally intended, I imagine, for a ballroom. It has a specially fine floor, and that musicians’ gallery at the end seems to indicate festivities on a big scale. To be sure, the whole scheme of decoration is too massive and over-ornate for these days, but it is all in harmony, and the gorgeousness of coloring has been toned down by time.”
This was true. The lofty walls were topped by a wide and heavy cornice, with an enormous cartouche in each corner, massive enough for a cathedral. But the coloring was dimmed by the years, and the gilding was tarnished to a soft bronze. Most of the furniture consisted of choice old pieces collected by Van Wyck for this especial use, and it was plain to be seen that he took great pride in these, and in his rare and valuable pictures and curios,
“It is my room,” he was saying, as he smiled benignly on his wife, “but I let Anne have her fallal teas here, because she thinks it’s picturesque. But except at the tea-hour, this is my exclusive domain.”
“You call it your study?” I inquired casually.
“I call it my study, yes; although I’m not a studious man, by any means. It is really my office, I suppose; but such a name would never fit this eighteenth-century atmosphere. I have my desk here, and my secretaries and lawyers come when I call them, and I have even profaned the place with a telephone, so that I’m always in touch with what the poets call the busy mart. Moreover, I confess I’m subject to short-lived fads and fancies, and this good-sized room gives me space to indulge my interest of the moment.”
“He is, indeed,” said Anne, laughing. “Last summer he was a naturalist, and this room was full of stuffed birds and dried beetles and all sorts of awful things. But that’s all over now, and this year —what are you this year, David?”
Van Wyck’s face hardened. A steely look came into his eyes, and his square jaw set itself more firmly, as he replied, in a dry, curt tone, "I’m a philanthropist.”
The word seemed simple enough, and yet Anne’s face also became suddenly serious, and, unless I was mistaken, a flash of anger shot from her dark eyes to her husband’s grim face. But just then Archer and Miss Fordyce joined us, and Anne’s smiles returned instantly.
“What mood, Beth?” she cried gaily. “You see, Honey, I’ve been telling Mr. Sturgis that you’re aesthetic and lanky-minded and all the rest of it, and you must live up to your reputation.”
“If I can,” murmured Miss Fordyce, rolling a pair of soulful blue eyes at me; “but I’m only a beginner—a disciple of the wonderful mysticism of the—”
“There, there, Beth, cut it short,” broke in Archer. “We know! The mysticism of the theosophical value of the occult as applied to the hyperæstheticism of the soul by whichever Great High Muck-a-Muck you’ve been reading last”
The others laughed, but Miss Fordyce gave the speaker a reproachful glance, which, however, utterly failed to wither him.
“You’d be a real nice girl, Beth,” he went on, “if you’d chuck mysticism and go in for athletics.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Archer,” began Miss Fordyce, in her soft, melodious voice; but Archer interrupted her:
“Now, don’t come the misunderstood racket on me! I won’t stand for it. Practise your wiles on Mr. Sturgis. Take him over there, and show him Mr. Van Wyck’s Buddha, and tell him