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She felt her temper rising and took advantage of the approach of Beauchamp to leave quickly. "Oh, Lieutenant! Have you seen Valencia?" The Englishman showed surprise. It happened that Alice had at that moment a view of Mrs. Van Tyle stretched on a deck chair some thirty feet away. Miss Frome hurried him along. Presently, with a low laugh, she explained. "I wanted to get away from him.
James was conscious of a little ripple of surprise as he looked down upon the copper crown of splendid hair above which rested the thin nimbus of smoke. He had expected a less intimate reception. But the astonishment had been sponged from his face before Valencia Van Tyle rose and came forward, cigarette in hand. "You did find time." "Was it likely I wouldn't?"
Alice drove the car forward several blocks without speaking, Valencia Van Tyle watching with good-humored contempt the little frown that rested on her cousin's candid face. "I perceive that my uncompromising cousin is moved to protest," she suggested placidly. "You ought not to have asked him, Val. It isn't fair to him or to father," answered Alice promptly. "People will talk.
It was a great relief to James, in these days when the complacency of his self-satisfaction was a little ruffled, to call often on Valencia Van Tyle and let himself drift pleasantly with her along primrose paths where moral obligations never obtruded.
A faint smile doubtful of its right touched the weak face of the little old man. "So you don't know your own father boy!" A sudden sickness ran through the lawyer and sapped his strength. He leaned against the desk uncertainly. It had come at last. The whole world would learn the truth about him. The Merrills, the Fromes, Valencia Van Tyle all of them would know it and scorn him.
Her eyes were very bright. She wanted to laugh and to weep at her discovery. "You see it didn't matter with my friends. And my reputation was beyond hope anyhow. It was different with James." She nodded. "Yes. It wouldn't have improved his chances with Valencia," her cousin admitted. Jeff permitted himself a smile. "My impression was that he did not have Mrs. Van Tyle in mind at the time."
"Everything's all right. His head must have struck the asphalt, but there seems to be no danger." Alice noticed that the newspaper man spoke to his cousin and not to her. Part 2 Though Valencia Van Tyle had not made up her mind to get married, James hit the mark when he guessed that she was interesting herself in the accessories that would go with such an event.
"The thing you know is bad enough." "Oh, that! That is nothing... now. It doesn't matter." Lieutenant Beauchamp emerged from a saloon and bore down upon them. "Mrs. Van Tyle has sent me to bring you to breakfast, Miss Frome. Mornin', Mr. Farnum." "And I'm ready for it, We've been round the deck ever so many times. Haven't we, Mr. Farnum?"
But Valencia did not care to take up the responsibilities that go with such a position. She was too indolent to adapt her life to the standards of others and perhaps too proud. Moreover, it happened that she had had enough of the club man type in the late lamented Van Tyle. This man was a worker. He would not annoy her or interfere with her careless pleasures. Again she asked herself, Why not?
He was keenly responsive to the physical allure of sex, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her share of magnetic aura. "You have expressed yourself. It's like you," he said with finality. Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know then what I am like?" "One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he ventured lightly.
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