"Young things are young things." Madame Delano looked at Helene, who had
turned very white and had lowered her own lids to hide the consternation
in her eyes. But as her mother ceased speaking she raised them in swift
appeal to Ruyler.
"Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price
wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long
skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of
the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that you
don't really mean it. I can't have Price jealous. That would be too
humiliating. I'm afraid I do flirt as naturally as I breathe, but Price
knows I haven't a thought for a man on earth but him." The color had
crept back into her cheeks, but there was still anxiety in her soft black
eyes, and Price was sure that the little pointed toe once more made its
peremptory appeal.
Madame Delano looked squarely at her son-in-law.
"That's all right--so far," she said grimly. "Helene is devoted to
you. But so have many other young wives been to busy American husbands.
Now, take my advice, and give her more of your companionship before it
is too late. Watch over her. There always comes a time--a
turning-point--European husbands understand, but American husbands are
fools. Woman's loyalty, fed on hope only, turns to resentment; and then
her separate life begins. Now, I've warned you. Go back to your office,
where, no doubt, your clerks are hanging out of the windows, wondering if
you are dead and the business wrecked. I want to talk to Helene."
III
In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt
lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than
he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly
understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past,
and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the
result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman
who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it
alarming, and--unwelcome, but inevitable thought--peculiarly dangerous to
a young and beautiful creature with wild and lawless blood in her veins.
However, it was patent that so far her apprehensions were merely the
result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own
threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San
Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with
which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no
doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on the city she
must hate.