"Mr. Lennox, you may know him, by sight I mean, will be coming here shortly. Please have him shown into that room there."
Mrs. Austen passed on. The little room at which she had glanced that afternoon received her – a hospitality in which a mirror joined. The latter welcomed her with a glimpse of herself. It was like meeting an old friend. But no; a friend certainly, yet not an old one. Age had not touched this lady, not impudently at least, though where it may have had the impertinence to lay a finger, art had applied another, a moving finger that had written a parody of youth on her face which was then turning to some one behind her whom the mirror disclosed.
In turning, she smiled.
"It is so good of you, Mr. Lennox, to look in on me. The door-man told you about Margaret, did he not? No? How careless of him. The dear child has a headache and has gone to bed."
"Has she?" said Lennox. He found but that. But at least he understood why Margaret had not come to his rooms. The headache had prevented her.
"It is nothing." Mrs. Austen was telling him. "To-morrow she will be herself again. Nice weather we are having."
"Very," Lennox answered.
As he would have said the same thing if Mrs. Austen had declared that the weather was beastly, the reply did not matter. It did not matter to her; it did not matter to him. She was thinking of something else and he was also. He was thinking of Margaret, wondering whether he might not go to her. Were it not for the strait-jacket that conventionality is and which pinions the sturdiest, he would have gone. He was a little afraid of Mrs. Austen, as an intelligent man sometimes is afraid of an imbecile woman. But his fear of her fainted beside the idea that if, disregarding the bagatelles of the door, he made his way to Margaret, she herself might not like it. That alone restrained him. Afterward he wished he had let nothing prevent him. Afterward he regretted it. It is the misery of life – and sometimes its reward – that regret should be futile.
But, at the moment, grim and virile, a hat in one hand, a stick in the other, his white tie just showing between the lapels of his overcoat, already he was consoling himself. He had not seen Margaret in the afternoon, and he was not to see her this evening. No matter. The morrow would repay – that morrow which is falser than the former day.
Pleasantly at him and at his thoughts, Mrs. Austen played the flute. "Won't you sit down?" In speaking, she sank on a sofa which she occupied amply.
Lennox, shifting his stick, took a chair. Later, in one of those evil moods that come to the best, as well as to the worst, he wished he had brained her with it.
With the magic flute, Mrs. Austen continued: "To-morrow is Sunday, is it not? You must be sure to come. Dear me! I can remember when everybody went to church on Sunday and then walked up and down Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue had trees then instead of shops and on the trees were such funny little worms. They used to hang down and crawl on you. The houses, too, were so nice. They all had piazzas and on the piazzas were honeysuckles. But I fear I am boasting. I don't really remember all that. It was my father who told me. Those must have been the good old days!"
Lennox again shifted his stick. "To-day I had hoped that you would look in on me."
The flute caressed the strain. "Yes. It was too bad! We had quite counted on it. Bachelor quarters must be so exciting."
"Well, not mine at any rate. They are rather dark."
"But that must make them all the more exciting! Blindman's buff! Hide and go seek! What fun you must have with your friends romping about!"
"My friends are too busy for that. Though to-day – "
"Yes?"
Lennox hesitated. He knew that this woman took no interest in him whatever, but he had intended to tell Margaret about Cassy.
Pleasantly Mrs. Austen prodded him. "Yes?"
"Nothing of any moment. This afternoon, Miss Cara, the girl who sang last night, came to see me. You may remember I told you I knew her father."
"It seems to me I do."
"Things have not gone well there and I advanced her a trifle for him."
Mrs. Austen unfurled her fan. It was all Honest Injun. She had not a doubt of it and never had. But if she had thought it a Sioux and Comanche story, it would have been the same to her.
"I am sorry you did not meet her," Lennox continued. "You might have lent her a hand."
"Professionally, you mean?"
"Yes."
"I might have her sing here," replied Mrs. Austen, who would have seen Cassy hanged first.
Lennox considered the picture: Mrs. Austen in the rôle of shepherdess, herding for Cassy's benefit the flock of sheep that society is. But the picture did not detain him. He stood up.
"That would be very good of you. Please tell Margaret I am sorry she has a headache and that I will look in on her to-morrow."
No you won't, thought Mrs. Austen, who said: "Yes, do."
In a moment, when he had gone, she looked again in the mirror. It showed her a woman who would not steal, unless she could do so undetectably; a woman who would not forge, because she did not know how. Crimes ridiculous or merely terrific she was too shrewd to commit. But there are crimes that the law cannot reach. There are cards, too, that fate may deal.
After looking at the woman, she looked at the cards. They were dreamlike. Even so, they needed stacking. Mrs. Austen arranged them carefully, ran them up her sleeve and floated to the room where Margaret waited.
As she entered, Margaret turned to her. Her face had that disquieting loveliness which Spanish art gave to the Madonna, the loveliness of flesh eclipsed certainly by the loveliness of the soul, but still flesh, still lovely.
At sight of it Mrs. Austen experienced the admiration tinctured with the vitriol of jealousy that some mothers inject. Mrs. Austen had been a belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl, who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs. Austen was blind to it. It was her daughter's physical beauty that she always saw and which, though she was jealous of it, had, she knew, a value, precisely as beauty had a value in Circassia where, before the war, it fetched as much as a hundred Turkish pounds. In New York, where amateurs are keener and beauty is more rare, it may run into millions.
Commercially conscious of that, Mrs. Austen felt for the cards and carelessly produced one.
"Do you know, I believe we are to have a shower. Your young man got off just in time."
Margaret, who had glanced at the prostrate nymph, looked at her upright mother. "Do you mean that Keith has come – and gone?"
Mrs. Austen sat down and extracted another card. "My dear, when I went below he was coming in. We – "
Margaret, with her usual directness, interrupted. "But he is coming back?"
"That depends on you."
"On me? How? What do you mean?"
"That you must do as you like, of course. But if you elect to see him, for goodness' sake don't refer to it."
"Refer to it!" Margaret exclaimed. "Refer to what?"
"The vestal whom we saw this afternoon."
"I don't understand."
Indulgently Mrs. Austen motioned. "It is hardly proper that you should."
Margaret winced and coloured. "Your insinuation is horrible."
Cheerfully Mrs. Austen smiled. Margaret's start, her heightened colour, her visible annoyance, these things comforted her. A grandee of Spain warmed his hands at the auto-da-fé. There are people just like him. There are people that take comfort in another's distress. Mrs. Austen did not know that she resembled them. She had nothing but Margaret's welfare in view. Nothing but that and her own. Her own though came first.
She raised the fan. "My dear, you misjudge me. I always