“And who do you suppose was here at lunch today? You must guess or you shan’t have your letter back. I’ll give you just one minute. Oh! I saw Laura Manhattan at Fantasia’s. Don’t forget that we are to dine with her tomorrow. She came in to row about a dress. I was rowing, too. You have no idea what a day I have had. You will have to give Fantasia a talking to. Look at the frippery I have on. And she promised that I should have something for tonight. There ought to be some punishment for such people. Don’t you think so, Mr. Arnswald? When people in Wall Street don’t keep their promises, they are put in jail, aren’t they? Well, jail is too good for that horrid old French-woman of a dressmaker, she ought to have the thumbscrews, the rack, and the hot side of the fagot. I will never believe her again, no, not even when I know she is telling the truth. She is the most ornamental liar I ever encountered. It is my opinion she would rather lie than not. Laura told me—but here, the minute’s up—you must guess, you must guess rightly, and you can only guess once.”
And Eden waved the letter again and laughed in her husband’s beard.
The gown which she wore, and which she had characterized as frippery, was an artful combination of tulle and of silk; it was colorless, yet silvery, and in it Eden, bare of arm and of neck, looked a water nymph garmented in sheen and foam. From her hair came an odor of distant oases. In her eyes were evocations of summer, and beneath them, on her cheeks and on the lobes of her ears, health had placed its token in pink. The corners of her mouth were upraised like the ends of the Greek bow, and now that she was laughing her lips suggested a red fruit cut in twain. She was the personification of caprice, adorably constructed, and constructed to be adored. Arnswald evidently found her appearance alluring, for his eyes followed her every movement.
“Hurry up,” she continued, as merrily as before; “the minute’s gone.”
Usselex may have been annoyed, but he affected to enter into the jest. “Your father—” he hazarded, and stretched his hand for the note.
But Eden again retreated. “You have lost,” she cried; “no one was here.” And finding herself at a safe distance, “I am a better guesser than you,” she added, “I can tell what is in this letter without reading it. Now answer me, what will you give me if I do? What ought he to give me, Mr. Arnswald? Prompt him, can’t you? I have never seen anyone so stupid.”
“Give it to me, Eden; you shall make your own terms—”
“Ah! you capitulate, do you? It’s too late! It’s too late!” she repeated in ringing crescendo. “You ought to have guessed;” and for greater safety she held the letter behind her. “It’s about stocks, Kansas-back bonds, seven sights offered and nothing bid—I have guessed right, have I not?”
“Eden—”
“Answer me; I have guessed right, I know I have.” And laughing still, she whisked the letter from behind her and held it to her eyes. “Why, it’s from a woman,” she cried. “What is this? ‘You have filled my life with living springs.’ Whose life have you filled?”
The merriment had deserted her lips, the color had gone from her cheeks. The hand which held the letter fell with it to her side. In her face was the contraction of pain. She looked at her husband. “Whose life is it that you have filled?” she asked, and her voice, that had rippled with laughter a moment before, became suddenly chill and subdued.
In the doorway before her the butler appeared in silent announcement that dinner was served.
Arnswald made a step forward. “The letter is mine, Mrs. Usselex,” he said, “I—”
“Oh,” she murmured, with a sigh that might have been accounted one of relief. “Oh, it is yours, is it?” And eying him inquisitorially for a second’s space, she placed the letter in his hand.
“We may as well go in to dinner,” she added at once, and with a glance at her husband she led the way.
IV
In Dogian days there was a Libro d’Oro in which the First Families of Venice were inscribed in illuminated script. In New York there is also a Golden Book, unwritten, yet voiced, and whoso’s name appears thereon has earned the cataloguing not from the idlesse of imbecile forefathers, but from shrewdness in coping with the public, forethought in the Stock Exchange, and prescience in the values of land and grain.
At the opera that night the aristocrats of the New World were in full force. Among them were men who could not alone have wedded the Adriatic but have dowered her as well. Venice in her greatest splendor had never dreamed such wealth as theirs. There was Jabez Robinson, his wife and children, familiarly known as the Swiss Family Robinson, the founder of their dynasty having emigrated from some Helvetian vale. A lightning calculator might have passed a week in the summing up of their possessions. There was old Jerolomon, who through the manipulation of monopolies exhaled an odor of Sing Sing, the which had been so attractive to the nostrils of an English peer that he had taken his daughter as wife. There was Madden, who controlled an entire state. There was Bucholz, who declared himself Above the Law, and who had erupted in New York three decades before with the seven sins for sole capital. There was Bleecker Bleecker, who each year gave away a pope’s ransom to charity and pursued his debtors to the grave. There was Dunwoodie, whose coat smelled of benzine and whose signature was potent as a king’s. There was Forbush, who lunched furtively on an apple and had given a private establishment to each one of his twelve children. There was Gwathmeys,
