Part 10 (2/2)

”You needn't be. On the contrary, you'll find it especially useful in this country, where foreigners are often eager to convert us to their customs, while we are tenacious of our own.”

”Thank you,” she said, in the spirit of meekness his didactic att.i.tude seemed to require. ”I'll try to remember that, and not fall into the mistake.”

”And if I can do anything for you,” he went on, awkwardly, ”in the way of schools--or--or--recommendations--you know I promised long ago that if you ever needed any one--”

”Thank you once more,” she said, hurriedly, before he had time to go on.

”I know I can count on your help; and if I require a good word, I shall not hesitate to ask you for it.”

As she slipped away, Pruyn was left with the uncomfortable sense of having appeared to a disadvantage. He had been stilted and patronizing, when he had meant to be cordial and kind. On the other hand, he resented the quickness with which she had read his thoughts, as well as her perception that he had ground for uneasiness regarding his child. That she should penetrate the inner shrine of reserve he kept closed against those who stood nearest to him in the world gave him a sense of injury; and he turned this feeling to account during the next few hours in trying to deaden the echo of the French voice with the Irish intonation that haunted his inner hearing, as well as to banish the memory of the plaintive smile in which, as he feared, meekness was blended with amus.e.m.e.nt at his expense.

VI

If the secret spring worked by James van Tromp had been an active agency in bringing Diane and Derek Pruyn once more together, as well as in creating the intimacy that sprang up during the next two months between Miss Lucilla and the elder Mrs. Eveleth, it had certainly nothing to do with the South American complications in the business of Van Tromp & Co., which made Pruyn's departure for Rio de Janeiro a possibility of the near future. He had long foreseen that he would be obliged to make the journey sooner or later, but that he should have to do it just now was particularly inconvenient. There was but one aspect in which the expedition might prove a blessing in disguise--he might take Dorothea with him.

During the six or eight weeks following the afternoon at Mrs.

Wappinger's he had bestowed upon Dorothea no small measure of attention, obtaining much the same result as a mastiff might gain from his investigation of the ways of a bird of paradise. He informed himself as to her diversions and her dancing-cla.s.ses, making the discovery that what other girls' mothers did for them, Dorothea was doing for herself.

As far as he could see, she was bringing herself up with the aid of a chosen band of eligible, well-conducted young men, varying in age from nineteen to twenty-two, whom she was training as a sort of body-guard against the day of her ”coming out.” On the occasions when he had opportunities for observation he noted the skill with which she managed them, as well as the chivalry with which they treated her; and yet there was in the situation an indefinable element that displeased him. It was something of a shock to learn that the flower he thought he was cultivating in secluded sweetness under gla.s.s had taken root of its own accord in the midst of young New York's great, gay parterre. Aware of the possibilities of this soil to produce over-stimulated growth, he could think of nothing better than to pluck it up and, temporarily at least, transplant it elsewhere. Having come to the decision overnight, he made the proposition when they met at breakfast in the morning.

A prettier object than Miss Dorothea Pruyn, at the head of her father's table, it would have been difficult to find in the whole range of ”dainty rogues in porcelain.” From the top of her bronze-colored hair to the tip of her bronze-colored shoes she was as complete as taste could make her. The flash of her eyes as she lifted them suddenly, and as suddenly dropped them, over her task among the coffee-cups was like that of summer waters; while the rapture of youth was in her smile, and a becoming school-girl shyness in her fleeting blushes. In the floral language of American society, she was ”not a bud”; she was only that small, hard, green thing out of which the bud is to unfold itself, but which does not lack a beauty of promise specially its own. If any criticism could be pa.s.sed upon her, it was that which her father made--that there was danger of the promise being antic.i.p.ated by a rather premature fulfilment, and the flower that needed time forced into a hurried, hot-house bloom.

”What! And leave my friends!” she exclaimed, when Derek, with some hesitation, had asked her how she would like the journey.

”They would keep.”

”That's just what they wouldn't do. When I came back I should find them in all sorts of new combinations, out of which I should be dropped.

You've got to be on the spot to keep in your set, otherwise you're lost.”

”Why should you be in a set? Why shouldn't you be independent?”

”That just shows how much you understand, father,” she said, pityingly.

”A girl who isn't in a set is as much an outsider as a Hindoo who isn't in a caste. I must know people; and I must know the right people; and I must know no one but the right people. It's perfectly simple.”

”Oh, perfectly. I can't help wondering, though, how you recognize the right people when you see them.”

”By instinct. You couldn't make a mistake about that, any more than one pigeon could make a mistake about another, or take it for a crow.”

”And is young Wappinger one of the right people?”

It was with an effort that Derek made up his mind to broach this subject, but Dorothea's self-possession was not disturbed.

”Certainly,” she replied, briefly, with perhaps a slight accentuation of her maiden dignity.

”I'm rather surprised at that.”

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