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Updated: August 9, 2024
She still needed Charley's influence in the world of affairs. Charley's final service was to be the increasing of his successful rival's fortune. I wondered what Charley would do, when the full extent of his usefulness dawned upon him; and with wonder renewed I thought of General Rieppe, and this daughter he had managed to beget.
I did not wish to be left out of it; I cannot tell you why perhaps it was contagious in the local air but a veritable madness of craving to know about it seized upon me. Of course, I saw that Miss Rieppe was, almost too grossly and obviously, "playing for time"; the health of people's fathers did not cause weekly extensions of this sort.
"Operatic?" "He could never be taught in those ways either," declared Kitty. "You would find his ardor always untrained provincial." Once more Hortense abstained from making any answer. Kitty grew superior. "Well, if that's to your taste, Hortense Rieppe!" "It was none of it like Charley," murmured Hortense. "I should think not! Charley's not crude. What do you see in that man?"
Well, yes; that might be it, if Hortense Rieppe were younger in years, and younger, especially, in soul; but her museum was too richly furnished with specimens of the chase, she had collected too many bits and bibelots from life's Hotel Druot and the great bazaar of female competition, to pay so great a price as marriage for merely John; particularly when a lady, even in Newport, can have but one husband at a time in her collection.
"You've been here long enough!" You may imagine my amazement at this. It was not until I had reached Mrs. Trevise's, and was sitting down to answer a note which had been left for me, that light again came. Hortense Rieppe had thought those flowers were from John Mayrant, and Eliza had let her think so.
He might smash the glasses, but he would not speak of his misgivings as to Hortense Rieppe. He began again, "Nor do I believe that a really nice girl would continue to think as those few do, if she once got safe away from them. Why, my dear sir," he stretched out his hand in emphasis, "you do not have to do anything untimely and extreme if you are in good earnest a dead game sport.
Neither Juno, therefore, nor any of them learned a word from me about the kettle-supporter incident. What I did take pains to inform the assembled company was my gratification that the report of Mr. Mayrant's engagement being broken was unfounded; and this caused Juno to observe that in that case Miss Rieppe must have the most imperative reasons for uniting herself to such a young man.
It was not until certain incidents of the days following brought Miss Rieppe's nature a good deal further home to me, that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned upon my mind; that I was also made aware how a woman's understanding of the words "Steel wasp," when applied by her to one of her own sex, may differ widely from a man's understanding of them; and that Miss Rieppe, through her thick veil, saw from her seat in the automobile something which my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected.
Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partial portraits one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalric nephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette; there the similarity ceased. And then, there was the toboggan fire-escape. Gregory St. Michael, or the "really nice girl" who was going to marry John Mayrant on Wednesday week.
"Oh, well! you will hear anything in a boarding-house. Indeed, that would be a great deal too good to be true." "May I ask where Miss Rieppe is all this while?" "The last news was from Palm Beach, where the air was said to be necessary for the General." "But," Mrs. Weguelin repeated, "we have every reason to believe that she is coming here in an automobile."
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