"But you told me on Sunday that you adored California, that it was like

fairy land--"

"Oh, all the women out here bluff themselves and everybody else just

so long and then suddenly go to pieces. It's a wonderful state, but

what a life! What a life! Surely I was made for something better. I

don't wonder--"

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Oh, nothing. I feel ungrateful, of course. I really should be quite

happy. Think if I had to go back to Rouen to live--after this taste of

freedom, and beauty--for California has all the beauties of youth as well

as its idiocies and vices--"

"There is not the remotest danger of your ever being obliged to live in

Rouen again--"

"Oh, I don't know. You might get tired of me. We might fight like cat and

dog for want of common interests, of something to talk about. You would

never take to drink like so many of the men, but I might--well, I'm glad

dinner is ready at last."

But she played with her food. That she was repressing an intense and

mounting excitement Ruyler did not doubt, and he also suspected that she

wished to broach some particular subject from which she turned in panic.

They were alone after coffee had been served, and he said abruptly: "What is it, Helene? Do you want money? I have an idea that Polly Roberts

and Aileen Lawton borrow heavily from you, and that they may have cleaned

you out completely on the first--"

"How dear of you to guess--or rather to get so close. It's worse than

that. I--that is--well--poor Polly went quite mad over a pearl necklace

at Shreve's and they told her to take it and wear it for a few days,

thinking, I suppose, she would never give it up and would get the money

somehow. She--oh, it's too dreadful--she lost it--and she dares not tell

Rex--he's lost quite a lot of money lately--and she's mad with

fright--and I told her--"

"Where did she lose it? It's not easy to lose a necklace, especially when

the clasp is new."

"She thinks it was stolen from her neck at the theater--you heard what

that man said."

"Ah! What was the price of the necklace?"

"Twenty thousand dollars. The pearls weren't so very large, of course,

but Polly never had had a pearl necklace--"

"I'll let her have the money to pay for it on one condition--that it is a

transaction, between Roberts and myself--"




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024