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Updated: June 3, 2025
Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson, her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man exactly the type you would like to see your rival marry.
Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that she was the beauty of the hour. She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had another advantage she was unmarried.
He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she made no secret of the fact. "Not asked, Mr. Wickham!" she said.
In spite of the truth of the observation that a married woman's greatest charm is her husband, he is also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs. Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the unmarried.
He was reckless and successful. Besides which he was understood to be personally attractive his picture in a silver frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs. Almar admired. Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that Christine should marry money.
This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a good-looking young man. In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the little public that really mattered, the lists were set.
Then as dinner was at the same instant announced, she put her hand on his arm. "Take me in to dinner, Cousin Max," she said. "I did not know he was your cousin," said Wickham, who suffered from the fatal tendency in moments of doubt to say something. Mrs. Almar looked at Riatt. "Will you be a cousin to me?" she asked. "It commits you to nothing."
They smiled at each other with a common impulse not to confess that earlier meeting on the stairs; and he was just about to settle down beside her, when the door opened and, last of all, Mrs. Almar came in. She was wearing her flame-color and lilac dress. Christine knew she would have it on; knew that she saved it for the greatest moments.
In the taxicab, he questioned her at once as to her impressions. "I didn't like Mr. Linburne or Mrs. Almar at all, Max. She kept asking me the greatest number of questions about you and the story of your life. What interest has she in you, I wonder?" "None," answered Riatt, but added rather quickly, "And what did you think of Linburne?" "I couldn't bear him, though I own he's nice looking.
She got up with a shrewd smile. "Let me congratulate you, too, Mr. Riatt," she said. "I always like to see people get what they deserve." "Oh, Nancy, I'm sure you think I'm getting far more than I deserve," said Christine. "You haven't actually got it yet, darling," returned Mrs. Almar. "That sounds almost like a threat, my dear." "More in the line of a prophecy."
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