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Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuous tete-a-tete, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy. Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off!
Was it Ellie and Bockheimer who ?" Strefford still stared. "You mean to say you didn't know?" "Who came after Nick and me...?" she insisted. "Why, do you suppose I'd have turned you out otherwise? That beastly Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there's one good thing: I shall never have to let the villa again!
She remembered, now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents' first entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue. She recalled his too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive countenance. She looked at Ellie Vanderlyn with sudden scorn. "I think you're abominable," she exclaimed. The other's perfect little face collapsed. "A-bo-minable? A-bo-mi-nable?
No doubt Ellie had blabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize was landed. "Well well well so I've caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy, my dear." She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn's, and his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity.
Algie's so rich, so appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep other women away from him and it's too exhausting...." "Algie?" Mrs. Vanderlyn's lovely eyebrows rose. "Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn't you know, I think he said you've dined with his parents. Nobody else in the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie's their only child.
Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season for her unmating and re-mating. "I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn." "Hullo?
She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. "She and Algie Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?" "I suppose so. I thought she'd told you. Ellie always tells everybody everything." "She would have told me, I daresay but I wouldn't let her." "Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don't see "
While they're going on I like to stay quite by myself.... I don't know why...." Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. "Ah," he murmured; and his lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. "Speaking of proceedings," he went on carelessly, "what stage have Ellie's reached, I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfully together to-day at Larue's."
"What's the use, Streff, dear? With all those jewels locked away in London " "Oh, I daresay you'll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why shouldn't I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I've seen a thumping one.... I'd like you to have it."
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