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"The fact is I'm not used to having much money to look after, and I don't want to make an ass of myself " He smiled, and Waythorn could not help noticing that there was something pleasant about his smile. "It feels uncommonly queer to have enough cash to pay one's bills. I'd have sold my soul for it a few years ago!" Waythorn winced at the allusion.
"I wanted to see Mrs. Waythorn about Lily, and your man asked me to wait here till she came in." "Of course," said Waythorn, remembering that a sudden leak had that morning given over the drawing-room to the plumbers. He opened his cigar-case and held it out to his visitor, and Haskett's acceptance seemed to mark a fresh stage in their intercourse.
He winced as the we slipped out, but Haskett seemed not to notice it. "Thank you, Mr. Waythorn. It's been an anxious time for me." "Ah, well, that's past. Soon she'll be able to go to you." Waythorn nodded and passed out. In his own room, he flung himself down with a groan. He hated the womanish sensibility which made him suffer so acutely from the grotesque chances of life.
His next days were thus haunted, and he determined to try to lay the ghosts by conjuring them up in his wife's presence. When he repeated Haskett's request a flame of anger passed over her face; but she subdued it instantly and spoke with a slight quiver of outraged motherhood. "It is very ungentlemanly of him," she said. The word grated on Waythorn. "That is neither here nor there.
And it startled him to think that she had, in the background of her life, a phase of existence so different from anything with which he had connected her. Varick, whatever his faults, was a gentleman, in the conventional, traditional sense of the term: the sense which at that moment seemed, oddly enough, to have most meaning to Waythorn.
Waythorn had felt miserably sure that he would not. But the governess was dismissed, and from time to time the little man demanded an interview with Alice. After the first outburst she accepted the situation with her usual adaptability. Haskett had once reminded Waythorn of the piano-tuner, and Mrs. Waythorn, after a month or two, appeared to class him with that domestic familiar.
Varick had no head for business, and the talk prolonged itself for nearly an hour while Waythorn set forth with scrupulous precision the details of the proposed transaction. "I'm awfully obliged to you," Varick said as he rose.
I'll try," she whispered back. Her face cleared at once, and as she looked at him across the flowers, between the rosy candle-shades, he saw her lips waver back into a smile. "How pretty everything is!" she sighed luxuriously. He turned to the butler. "The champagne at once, please. Mrs. Waythorn is tired." In a moment or two their eyes met above the sparkling glasses.
He was late for luncheon, and turned in at the nearest restaurant instead of going to his club. The place was full, and the waiter hurried him to the back of the room to capture the only vacant table. In the cloud of cigar-smoke Waythorn did not at once distinguish his neighbors; but presently, looking about him, he saw Varick seated a few feet off.
The first time they met in a drawing-room, Varick took up their intercourse in the same easy key, and his hostess's grateful glance obliged Waythorn to respond to it. After that they ran across each other frequently, and one evening at a ball Waythorn, wandering through the remoter rooms, came upon Varick seated beside his wife.
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