In her room, in the front of the house, Laura was partly undressed when Mrs. Cressler knocked at her door. The latter had put on a wrapper of flowered silk, and her hair was bound in invisible nets.
“I brought you a dressing-gown,” she said. She hung it over the foot of the bed, and sat down on the bed itself, watching Laura, who stood before the glass of the bureau, her head bent upon her breast, her hands busy with the back of her hair. From time to time the hairpins clicked as she laid them down in the silver trays close at hand. Then putting her chin in the air, she shook her head, and the great braids, unlooped, fell to her waist.
“What pretty hair you have, child,” murmured Mrs. Cressler. She was settling herself for a long talk with her protégé. She had much to tell, but now that they had the whole night before them, could afford to take her time.
Between the two women the conversation began slowly, with detached phrases and observations that did not call necessarily for answers—mere beginnings that they did not care to follow up.
“They tell me,” said Mrs. Cressler, “that that Gretry girl smokes ten cigarettes every night before she goes to bed. You know the Gretrys—they were at the opera the other night.”
Laura permitted herself an indefinite murmur of interest. Her head to one side, she drew the brush in slow, deliberate movements downward underneath the long, thick strands of her hair. Mrs. Cressler watched her attentively.
“Why don’t you wear your hair that new way, Laura,” she remarked, “farther down on your neck? I see everyone doing it now.”
The house was very still. Outside the double windows they could hear the faint murmuring click of the frozen snow. A radiator in the hallway clanked and strangled for a moment, then fell quiet again.
“What a pretty room this is,” said Laura. “I think I’ll have to do our guest room something like this—a sort of white and gold effect. My hair? Oh, I don’t know. Wearing it low that way makes it catch so on the hooks of your collar, and, besides, I was afraid it would make my head look so flat.”
There was a silence. Laura braided a long strand, with quick, regular motions of both hands, and letting it fall over her shoulder, shook it into place with a twist of her head. She stepped out of her skirt, and Mrs. Cressler handed her her dressing-gown, and brought out a pair of quilted slippers of red satin from the wardrobe.
In the grate, the fire that had been lighted just before they had come upstairs was crackling sharply. Laura drew up an armchair and sat down in front of it, her chin in her hand. Mrs. Cressler stretched herself upon the bed, an arm behind her head.
“Well, Laura,” she began at length, “I have some real news for you. My dear, I believe you’ve made a conquest.”
“I!” murmured Laura, looking around. She feigned a surprise, though she guessed at once that Mrs. Cressler had Corthell in mind.
“That Mr. Jadwin—the one you met at the opera.”
Genuinely taken aback, Laura sat upright and stared wide-eyed.
“Mr. Jadwin!” she exclaimed. “Why, we didn’t have five minutes’ talk. Why, I hardly know the man. I only met him last night.”
But Mrs. Cressler shook her head, closing her eyes and putting her lips together.
“That don’t make any difference, Laura. Trust me to tell when a man is taken with a girl. My dear, you can have him as easy as that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re mistaken, Mrs. Cressler.”
“Not in the least. I’ve known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen years—nobody better. He’s as old a family friend as Charlie and I have. I know him like a book. And I tell you the man is in love with you.”
“Well, I hope he didn’t tell you as much,” cried Laura, promising herself to be royally angry if such was the case. But Mrs. Cressler hastened to reassure her.
“Oh my, no. But all the way home last night—he came home with us, you know—he kept referring to you, and just so soon as the conversation got on some other subject he would lose interest. He wanted to know all about you—oh, you know how a man will talk,” she exclaimed. “And he said you had more sense and more intelligence than any girl he had ever known.”
“Oh, well,” answered Laura deprecatingly, as if to say that that did not count for much with her.
“And that you were simply beautiful. He said that he never remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman.”
Laura turned her head away, a hand shielding her cheek. She did not answer immediately, then at length:
“Has he—this Mr. Jadwin—has he ever been married before?”
“No, no. He’s a bachelor, and rich! He could buy and sell us. And don’t think, Laura dear, that I’m jumping at conclusions. I hope I’m woman of the world enough to know that a man who’s taken with a pretty face and smart talk isn’t going to rush right into matrimony because of that. It wasn’t so much what Curtis Jadwin said—though, dear me suz, he talked enough about you—as what he didn’t say. I could tell. He was thinking hard. He was hit, Laura. I know he was. And Charlie said he spoke about you again this morning at breakfast. Charlie makes me tired sometimes,” she added irrelevantly.
“Charlie?” repeated Laura.
“Well, of course I spoke to him about Jadwin, and how taken he seemed with you, and the man roared at me.”
“He didn’t believe it, then.”
“Yes he did—when I could get him to talk seriously about it, and when I made him remember how Mr. Jadwin had spoken in the carriage coming home.”
Laura curled her leg under her and sat nursing her foot and looking into the fire. For a long time neither spoke. A little clock of brass and black marble began to
