Part 12 (1/2)
”I'm sorry if I worried you, Mr. North.” Her tone was chastened, but there was an undernote of warning. ”I've been free so long that I kind of forget I'm under extradition.”
A wave of contrition swept over his ill-humor as her slim-clad figure preceded him out to the waiting motor. She had been coolly insubordinate, of course, but she was young and very much alone in a strange environment. She could be led, perhaps, but she would never be driven.
Cesare, the Halsteads' chauffeur, touched the brim of his cap smartly, and Willa bestowed upon him a dazzling smile. Only the snap of the limousine door prevented her shaking hands.
”He looks like a right-nice boy,” she remarked navely. ”Do you suppose he'll teach me how to drive a car of my own?”
”If he is told to do so,” Mr. North replied with dignity, ”and it is decided that you are to have a car.”
She darted an appraising glance at him, but he vaguely felt a certain ambiguous quality in the silence which followed, and congratulated himself that they had reached their journey's end.
Mrs. Ripley Halstead awaited them in the drawing-room. She was a tall, commanding woman in the indefinite forties, with a high, thin nose and cold, slightly protruding eyes. Her dark hair, still untouched by gray, was arranged in a modishly severe fas.h.i.+on and her smile extended no farther than her straight lips.
”So this is our little cousin?” She brushed the girl's cheek with a light kiss. ”My dear Willa, words cannot express our pleasure that you have been found at last, we have doubted and feared for so long. I hope that you will be very happy here with us, and I am sure that we shall all manage famously.”
”Thank you,” Willa murmured, through stiffened lips. ”This situation has been kind of thrust on both of us, but I reckon we can make the best of it.”
The lady gasped and turned to the attorney, who was watching with a gleam of speculation in his eye.
”Mason, we have much to thank you for in restoring our young relative to us, but I must defer that now. You will dine with us?”
”Thank you, no.” He bowed over her hand. ”To tell you the truth, I am rather f.a.gged out from my trip, and I am anxious to get on up-town.
Please, tell Ripley that I will see him to-morrow, and transfer the necessary papers to him.--Au revoir, my dear. Try to remember what I have told you.”
Willa stared with dazed eyes about the pretty room to which she was ushered. The furniture was of ivory and dull gold, the walls, draperies and floor a soft French blue, and delicate rose-shaded lights glowed delicately in many brackets.
The drawing-room she had taken as a matter of course; it impressed her as being not unlike that of the big hotel at Tampico, but to be expected to live and move around and sleep in this fragile, stifling, cluttered doll's house of a room was unthinkable. It was hers, the maid had said so; therefore, she would make the best of it, in her own fas.h.i.+on.
A half-hour later the house-maid presented herself at Mrs. Halstead's door in a state bordering on hysteria.
”If you please, Madame, the young lady, Miss Murdaugh, has taken her room all to pieces. The draperies' are down from the windows and piled in a corner with the cus.h.i.+ons from the chaise longue, and the bed is moved over to the windows and stripped down to the blanket. All the rose shades are off the lights and the furniture is pushed back against the wall. Miss Murdaugh rang for me just now to take all the drapery and things out of the room, and I thought I had better come to you.”
Mrs. Halstead stepped forward, but stopped with a slight compression of her lips.
”Very well, Katie. You may remove them, for the time being. I will see Miss Murdaugh about it later.”
When the housemaid had withdrawn, her mistress dropped rather than seated herself in the nearest chair. The mechanical smile had vanished and her eyes narrowed. She foresaw friction ahead.
Willa, serenely unconscious that she had offended, slipped into the one thin black gown which she possessed, a mail-order purchase which had given her immense satisfaction, but when dinner was announced and she descended the stairs, she paused aghast at the splendor before her.
A girl stood in the drawing-room door in a marvelous creation which seemed made of diamond-tipped, rainbow-tinted mist. From it her youthful shoulders and slim neck rose creamily, surmounted by a small head banded boyishly with golden hair. Her wide eyes were china blue, her nose piquantly retrousse and she was as vacuously pretty as a wax doll.
”How do you do?” She came forward with a graceful fluttering movement.
”You are Willa, aren't you? I hope we are going to be terribly good friends. I'm your cousin, Angelica.”
”Named after a dessert.” A languid, teasing voice came from behind her. ”Welcome to our city, my dear cousin! Hope you won't find us too peaceable after Mexico.”
”No fear!” The doll-like eyes snapped dangerously. ”This is my brother Vernon, Willa. Mother will be down in a moment.”
Willa had suffered herself to be pecked at by the other girl's perfumed lips, and now she took the hand of the dapper youth who confronted her.