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He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.
If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends required it.
"I didn't let her. And I don't let you," Susy added sharply, as he helped her into the gondola. "Oh, all right: I daresay you're right. It simplifies things," Strefford placidly acquiesced. She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward. Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance she had travelled during the last year.
On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just because she felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and in the crowded rooms below it would have been impossible. Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters.
These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels where the guests were as international as the waiters, had inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over the whole face of Europe, and according to every code that attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his home in this world, but only one of his homes.
It's happiness that's done it, my dear. You're just one of the people with whom it happens to agree." Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic face. "What is it that's agreeing with you, Streffy? I've never seen you so human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa." Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket.
If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only because they spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be "foreign," and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford was English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.
She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning's post brought a letter. The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her hostess's door.
She and Nick had spent the greater part of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn's roof; but to Ellie, obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at the same moment, with young Davenant's supplanter the "bounder" whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend was that Susy should at last secure her prize her incredible prize.
There was nothing, now, that she couldn't buy, nowhere that she couldn't go: she had only to choose and to triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusion of enjoyment. Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England, and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and virtually avowed, relation.
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