“You see, Streff—oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each other?” she suddenly began.
“Why, indeed: but do we?”
Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. “About Ellie, I mean—and Nelson.”
“Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply the term to one of the million candle- power advertisements that adorn your native thoroughfares.”
“Well, yes. But—” She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised Ellie not to speak?
“My Susan, what’s wrong?” Strefford asked.
“I don’t know….”
“Well, I do, then: you’re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here, she’ll blurt out something—injudicious.”
“Oh, she won’t!” Susy cried with conviction.
“Well, then—who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you and I and Nick—”
“Oh,” she gasped, interrupting him, “that’s just it. Nick doesn’t know… doesn’t even suspect. And if he did….”
Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. “I don’t see—hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?”
That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.
“If Nick should find out that I know….”
“Good Lord—doesn’t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it’s not the first time—”
She remained silent.
“The first time you’ve received confidences—from married friends. Does Nick suppose you’ve lived even to your tender age without… Hang it, what’s come over you, child?”
What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness.
“Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn’t been away for a cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because it ‘worries father’ to think that mother needs to take care of her health.” She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to sound.
“Well—?” he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had sunk.
“Well, Nick doesn’t… doesn’t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our summer here to… to my knowing….”
Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the darkness. “Jove!” he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
“What was left of soul, I wonder—?” the young composer’s voice shrilled through the open windows.
Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
“Well, my dear, we’ll see it through between us; you and I-and Clarissa,” he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: “I can never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby.”
IX.
NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable satisfaction.
He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and a large and credulous smile.
At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.
“Well—well—well! So I’ve caught you at it!” cried the happy father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of “Hello, old Nelson,” hailed his appearance.
It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn & Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked curiously and attentively at his host.
Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.
“Hullo,” he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket hanging from Clarissa’s neck. “Who’s been giving my daughter jewellery, I’d like to know!”
“Oh, Streffy did—just think, father! Because I said I’d rather have it than a book, you know,” Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about her father’s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.
Nelson Vanderlyn’s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came into them whenever there was a question of material values.
“What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like that! You’d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl—” he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.
“Oh, hadn’t I? Why? Because it’s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive for me? Of course you daren’t imply
