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Altogether, she looked individual, astonishingly young, and pathetically alone. Mrs. Vandervelde's interest was aroused. Skilfully she tried to draw the girl out, and was relieved to discover that she wasn't talkative; nor was she awkward. She sat with her hands on the arms of her chair, restfully; and while you spoke, you could see that she weighed what you were saying, and you.
Commonplace as the girl was, she managed to win Vandervelde's interest and sympathy. That she had won young Peter Champneys's didn't surprise him. He was glad that she had had that one disinterested and kindly deed to look back to. The boy's quixotic behavior brought a smile to the lawyer's lips.
He was so occupied with his satiric vision of the pretences of the diplomatic world that, though his attitude to the war was as anti-Prussian as M. Vandervelde's, a great number of people thought he must be a pro-German. The fact is, in war time more than at any other time, people dread the vision of the satirist and the sceptic.
Thank you and God bless you, Vandervelde! "Put up that note-book. Take a day off. Go and enjoy yourself. Be happy!" said Vandervelde to the secretary. Then he snatched up the desk telephone. "The florist's? Yes? How soon can you get six dozen bride roses up here, to Mr. Vandervelde's office? Yes, this is Mr. Vandervelde speaking. You can?
He had not the warmth of heart that at times obscured Jason Vandervelde's judgment, nor the touch of unworldliness that marked the behavior of the Champneys men. His intellect had a cold, clear brilliancy, diamond-bright, diamond-hard; to this he added tact, and the power of organizing and directing and of getting results. In certain crises such men are invaluable. Hayden hated war.
Long days to loaf through, in which to reorganize his existence in accordance with his newer values. Isolation was the balm his spirit craved. Let him have that, let it help him to become his own man again, and he'd be ready to face life and work like a giant refreshed. "You'll go?" Vandervelde's voice was studiously restrained; he had lowered his lids to hide the eagerness of his eyes.
Marcia, now so admired, so sure, with so many interests, so many friends, and with Jason Vandervelde's quiet love always hers did she ever have that haunting sense of the impermanence of all possessions; of having, in the end, nothing but herself? "What are you thinking, when you look at me like that?" Marcia asked her one evening, smilingly. She was as curious about Nancy as Nancy was about her.
"An' now maybe he'll be wantin' to talk with you, so I'll leave you be. Good night, dearie," and she stepped away quietly, a trail of perfume in her wake, so that Vandervelde's nose involuntarily wrinkled. Gracie lay and looked at her visitor. "You ain't his uncle. You don't look nothin' at all like him," said she, disappointedly. "No. His uncle is dead.
She responded instantly to Mrs. Vandervelde's suggestions and instructions, and carried them out with an intelligent thoroughness that at times made her mentor gasp. It gave her a definite object to work for, and kept her from thinking too much about Glenn Mitchell. And she didn't want to think about Glenn Mitchell. It hurt.
Vandervelde's surprise. She had not expected this! She studied her old friend speculatively. H'm! She remembered the pale face of the young Italian poet whose sad sonnets all Italy was reading with delight. Then she looked at the red-headed source of those sonnets, and she had no doubt as to the cause of Mr. Hayden's appearance in Florence at this time, and wondered a bit.
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