Ladies Must Live Part 18

"What luck to run across you, though of course this is the only place in New York where one can get food that doesn't actually poison one. Last week--do you remember, Lee? We dined somewhere or other with the Petermans and nothing from the beginning of dinner to the end was fit to eat. But, bless them, they did not know. Have you met Mrs. Linburne? Oh, she knows all about _us_. In fact every one does, for I can't resist wearing this." She moved her left hand on which his diamond shone like a swollen star. "How did you find my father?"

"Most amiable," answered Riatt rather poisonously, and regretted the poison when he saw the Linburnes exchange an amused glance. Of course every one knew that Mr. Fenimer would present no obstacles.

"Who are you lunching with, Max? Is that your little secretary?"

The tone, very civil and friendly, made Max furious, as if any one that Christine did not know was hardly worth inquiring about.

"No, it's Miss Lane--an old friend of mine. I think I must have spoken to you about her."

"Oh, the perfect provider? Is that really she?" Christine craned her neck openly to stare at her. "Why, she's rather nice looking--for a good housekeeper, that is. You're dining with me to-night, aren't you?"

"No," answered Riatt, with a sudden inspiration of ill-humor. "I'm dining with Miss Lane."

"Bring her, too! Won't she come?"

"I really can't say."

"You can ask her."

"To your house?"

Christine always knew when she was really beaten. She got up with a sigh. "Take me over," she said to him, "and I'll ask her myself." And she added to the Linburnes: "Out-of-town people are always so fussy about little things."

Riatt did not know if this slightly contemptuous observation were meant to apply to him or to Miss Lane; he hoped in his heart that Dorothy would refuse the invitation. But he under-estimated Christine's powers. No one could have been more persuasive, more meltingly sweet, and compellingly cordial than she was, and it was soon arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine that evening.

When it was over, and he was back again in his own seat, he could see, by glancing at Christine that she was engaged in a long humorous account of the incident, for her own table; and he could tell, even from that distance, when he was supposed to be speaking, when Dorothy, and when Christine was repeating her own words. Meanwhile Dorothy was saying:

"How charming and simple she is, Max. You always hear of these people as being so artificial and elaborate."

"Oh, they're direct enough," returned Riatt bitterly.

The bitterness was so apparent that Dorothy could not ignore it. She looked up at him for an instant and then she said seriously: "I believe I know what the trouble with you is, Max. You can't believe that she loves you for yourself. You're haunted by the dread that what you have has something to do with it. Isn't that it?"

Max now made use of the well-known counter question as an escape from a tight place.

"And what is your judgment on that point, Dolly?"

"She loves you," said Miss Lane, with conviction, and a moment afterward she sighed.

"Without disputing your opinion," returned Riatt, "I should very much like to know on what you base it."

"Oh, on a hundred things--on her look, her manner, her being so nice to me--on woman's intuition in fact."

Riatt thought to himself that he had never had much confidence in the intuition theory and now he had none.

They did not part at the termination of lunch. It was almost a duty, Riatt considered, to show a stranger a few of the sights. Miss Lane, who was extremely well-informed on all questions of art, suggested the Metropolitan Museum; and after that they took a taxicab and drove along the river and watched the winter sunset above the palisades; and then they went and had tea at the Plaza, and by the time they returned to Mrs.

Lane it was almost the hour for dressing for dinner; and then Max sat gossiping with Mrs. Lane, for whom he had always had the deepest affection, until he knew he was going to be late.

They were late--a difficult thing to be in the Fenimer household. The party, a small one, was waiting when Miss Lane and Mr. Riatt were ushered in. Nancy was there, and Hickson, and Mr. Linburne without his wife this time; and Mr. Fenimer himself, doing honor to his future son-in-law by taking a meal at home.

Christine in a wonderful pink chiffon and lace tea-gown came forward to greet Dorothy, rather than Max, to whom she gave merely an understanding smile, while she held the girl's hand an instant.

"Max says this is your first visit to New York," she said, after she had introduced her father and Nancy. "It is good of you to give us an evening, when there are so many more amusing things to do, but Max says we are as interesting as Bushmen or Hottentots. I hope you'll find us so."

The hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled, for while the presence of Mr.

Fenimer, who was rather a stickler for etiquette, prevented the perfect freedom that had reigned at the Usshers', the talk turned on people whom Dorothy did not know, and it was so quick and allusive that no outsider could have followed it. Hickson, soon appreciating something in Miss Lane's situation not utterly unlike his own, was touched by her obvious isolation, and tried to make up for the neglect of the others. Riatt, sitting between Nancy and Christine, had little time left to him for observation of any one else.

When dinner was over Christine instantly drew him away to her own little sitting-room, on pretense of showing him some letter of congratulation that she had received. But once there, she shut the door, and standing before it, she said, with an air of the deepest feeling:

"You're in love with this girl."

Riatt, who had sunk comfortably down on a sofa by the fire, looked up in surprise.

"And if I am?" he answered.

"You need not humiliate me by making it so evident," she retorted, and almost stamped her foot. "Lunching with her in public, and taking her to tea, as I was told, getting here so late for dinner--I wish you could have heard the way Nancy and Lee Linburne were goading me before dinner about it."

"My dear Christine," said Max, and he was amused to hear a tone of real conjugal remonstrance in his voice, "you have lunched and dined in one day with Hickson, and yet I don't feel I have any grounds of complaint."

"Every one knows how little I care for Ned," she answered, "but people say you do care for this little Western mouse. I hate her. She's good and nice, and the kind of a girl men think it wise to marry, and just as different from me as she can be. I do hate her--and I hate myself too."

And she covered her face with her hands.

"Come here, Christine," said Riatt, without moving, and was rather surprised when she obeyed. He made her sit down beside him, and taking her hands from her face, was astonished to find that she was really crying.

"Why, my dear child," he said, in the most paternal manner he could manage. "What is this all about?" And it was quite in the same note that Christine wept a moment on his shoulder. Then she raised her head, with a return of her old brisk manner.

"I'm jealous," she said. "Oh, don't suppose one can't be jealous of people one doesn't care for. I could be jealous of any one when Nancy begins teasing me and making fun of me. And I'm jealous too, because I'm sure she's a nice girl and I've made such a mess of my life, and I deserve it all; but when you came in together, as if you had just been happily married, and I looked at Ned and thought how wretched I'm always going to be with him, and what silly things I shall undoubtedly do before I die--"

"I hate to hear you talk like that."

"Why should you care? _She'll_ never do silly things--that's clear. Is that why you love her?"

"As a matter of fact I am not in love with Miss Lane."

"My dear Max, there's really no reason why you should deceive me about it."

"That's just what she said about you."

"You mean"--Christine sprang to her feet and gazed at him like an outraged empress--"You mean that you told her that you didn't love me?"

"I most a.s.suredly did."

"Max, how could you be so low, so despicable, so false?"

Riatt laughed. "Well, it certainly was not false, Christine," he said.

"It happens to be true, you know; and I felt I owed a measure of truth to a very old and very real friendship. I told her nothing more than that--I was engaged and not madly in love."

Christine threw up her hands. "The game is up," she said. "She'll tell everybody, of course."