Empire

happens?”

“You will be paid, from the estate, thirty thousand dollars a year until you are twenty-seven. Then you will inherit your half.”

“Suppose Blaise loses it all. What then?”

“You will have half of nothing.”

“So I must get my share now.”

“What makes you think Blaise will lose instead of make money?” Sanford eyed her curiously. For Caroline, a banquette’s advantage was that with a slight turn of the head one’s features-half-visible at best-were no longer on display. She looked toward the next table, where an actress whom she had often seen on stage was trying to look obscure in order that everyone might see how young she looked offstage, when, of course, for an actress, the Palm Garden was the ultimate stage.

“Blaise is ambitious, and ambitious people almost always fail, don’t they?”

“That’s a curious notion, Miss Caroline. I mean, there was Caesar and Lincoln and… and…”

“Two excellent examples. Both murdered. But I wasn’t thinking of that sort of huge ambition. I was thinking of people who are in a hurry, very young, to make others take notice of them. Well, Blaise is rushing into the world like… like…”

“Like Mr. Hearst?”

“Exactly. He tells me, proudly, that Mr. Hearst has lost millions of dollars on his two newspapers.”

“But Mr. Hearst-a true rotter-will make other fortunes. He is made for this degraded time.”

“Perhaps he will. Perhaps he won’t. But his mother is richer than our father was, and I don’t want to end up with half of nothing.”

Sanford looked at her curiously. “If what you call ambitious men lose fortunes, what sort of a man do you think makes one?”

“My father.” The answer was prompt. “He was indolent. He paid no attention to business, and he more than doubled his inheritance.” Caroline turned, full face, to Sanford. “We must find a way to force Blaise to give up what’s not his.”

“But Mr. Houghteling has already taken the first steps. I think a court case might be risky.”

Caroline involuntarily shuddered; anger and fear commingled. “Surrender is riskier. Isn’t this the city where everyone can be bought? Well, let us buy a judge, or is it the jury one pays for?”

Sanford smiled to show that he was not shocked; and looked very shocked indeed. Caroline felt a certain compassion for her upright relative. “Our city officials are generally corrupt,” he said. “But I wouldn’t know how to deal with that sort of thing. You see, I am with the reform movement. I helped Colonel Roosevelt when he was police commissioner. Of course, reform is dead for the moment and Tammany’s back in power again with Van Wyck, who’s Boss Croker’s man. Croker’s back, too.” The string trio, as if cued, began to play the song of the year, the sickening, to Caroline’s Parisian ear, “The Rosary.” Sentimental religiosity and public stealing, that was the new world. Well, she decided, she had better master it; or be mastered herself. There was, all in all, a certain advantage to having been brought up by a lazy father who could not speak the language of the country where he lived. As a result, Caroline had been in charge not only of her own life but of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, never really yielding her authority to any one of the resident ladies. In the long run, the managing of the ladies had taught her patience and diplomacy. Unfortunately, the world of men had been closed to her. Blaise, who might have been a link, was always away at school either in England or in the United States; and since the Colonel was like no other man, what she had learned in the managing of him was obviously not going to be of much use to her with the brutes of the Palm Garden. The celebrated actress-who was she?-was listening, head to one side, eyes half-closed, to “The Rosary”; she appeared to be having a religious experience, to the awe of her companions, rude bewhiskered New Yorkers, with red faces, and a reverence for the finer things, of which the actress was, so expensively, one.

“Will you see your brother?” Sanford was tentative; but then he had never known what her relations were with the half-brother who had, so suddenly, turned pirate. Caroline herself was not certain just what she felt, other than fury. She had always appreciated Blaise’s energy, both athletic and moral, if moral was the word for a highly immoral or amoral will to rise. She had even found Blaise’s beauty attractive in the sense that they complemented one another; he was blond and she was dark. He should have been a bit taller with long, less-bowed legs; but then she might have been more usual had she been shorter and fuller-much fuller, since fashion had now decreed magnificent poitrines for the ladies while nature had decreed, in her case, otherwise. Although Worth had made up the difference artfully, the disappointment of her future husband was a source of not exactly pleasant daydreams.

Caroline rose. “Blaise is taking me to the theater. Then we shall go to supper, the two of us, at Rector’s, which I can now enter, as I am a woman of twenty-one though not yet an heiress of twenty-seven.” Caroline saw that she had made her point. Sanford nodded; looked grim; he would do battle for her. As they swept into the Peacock Alley, Sanford said, “You must be very careful of what you say to your brother.”

“I always am. But he does know that we mean to fight, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I’ve made that clear to Mr. Houghteling. Perhaps you shouldn’t mention the matter to Blaise.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

They entered the high-ceilinged, resonant lobby, suggestive of a Bernini nightmare, thought Caroline, darkly approving the excess of gold and crystal and red damask, through which moved the hotel staff, evenly divided between those dressed to look like officers of the Habsburg court and those got up as members of some very superior parliament where Prince Albert frock-coats were cut to perfection and trousers were subtly, grayly striped. Caroline walked Sanford to the door. He seemed disturbed; then blurted out: “You must have someone with you, you know.”

“A governess?” Caroline smiled. “But surely I’ve been governed all my life.”

“I meant a suitable lady, a relative…”

“Those who are suitable are not available, those who are available… Don’t worry. I have Marguerite. She’s been with us all my life. She sleeps in a small room next to my bedroom. The hotel was relieved to see her honest, ugly face.”

“Well, then, I suppose… But when you go out, she goes with you?”

“When we take the air, yes. But I’m not going to take her to Mrs. Astor’s. She’s far too intelligent for those people. She has read Pascal.”

Sanford looked puzzled; then said, “Good-by. I’ll see you tomorrow, if I may. After I’ve talked to Mr. Houghteling and you…”

“… have not talked to Blaise.” Caroline smiled, as he left; and kept on smiling all the way to the elevator; then caught a glimpse in the mirrored door of her own face, made perfectly stupid by the insipid smile. She frowned; beauty regained.

Caroline’s beauty-such as it was-was again lost at Mrs. Astor’s. Although she had made up her mind not to smile, habit undid her; and she looked, she knew, exactly the way she was expected to look: stupid, innocent, young. But then, she thought dourly, she was all three and the absolute proof of her stupidity was the fact that she knew it and could do nothing about it. She had had a superior education with Mlle. Souvestre. She had read the classics; she knew art. But no one had ever explained to her how not to be cheated out of a fortune.

Harry Lehr pranced toward her as she crossed the first drawing room, empty except for the two of them. “Oh, Miss Sanford! You are a sight for sore eyes!”

“In that case, I shall go live in Lourdes and make my fortune.”

“You won’t need to go anywhere for that.” Lehr had not heard of Lourdes; and Caroline was not in an instructive mood. “She’s pouring tea herself, in the library. Just a few people, the chosen ones, you might say.”

“And then again might not.” Caroline enjoyed Lehr’s deep silliness. Paris was filled with similar lapdogs. There seemed to be a universal law that the greater the lady the more urgent it was for her to have a Lehr to make her laugh, to collect gossip and new people, to be always at her side and yet never give her cause to fear compromise. Lehr was in his late twenties; from Baltimore. He lived by his wits. He sold champagne to friends. On occasion, he liked to dress up as a smart lady; and make people laugh.

Caroline followed, happily, the conventionally dressed Lehr through a second drawing room to a library, newly