I?”
“You certainly are not!” laughed Lilah. “And here’s my advice: Pick out the best thing in sight—the man who has all the mental, physical, social and financial qualities you want, and then go after him hammer and tongs—the way we used to. After you’ve got him don’t say to yourself ‘Well, he can’t sing like Billy,’ or ‘I wish he played better golf.’ You can’t have everything. Shut your eyes and turn off your sense of humor, and then after you’re married it’ll be very different and you’ll be mighty glad.”
“Yes,” said Myra absently; “I’ve had that advice before.”
“Drifting into romance is easy when you’re eighteen,” continued Lilah emphatically; “but after five years of it your capacity for it simply burns out.”
“I’ve had such nice times,” sighed Myra, “and such sweet men. To tell you the truth I have decided to go after someone.”
“Who?”
“Knowleton Whitney. Believe me, I may be a bit blasé, but I can still get any man I want.”
“You really want him?”
“Yes—as much as I’ll ever want anyone. He’s smart as a whip, and shy—rather sweetly shy—and they say his family have the best-looking place in Westchester County.”
Lilah sipped the last of her tea and glanced at her wrist watch.
“I’ve got to tear, dear.”
They rose together and, sauntering out on Park Avenue, hailed taxi-cabs.
“I’m awfully glad, Myra; and I know you’ll be glad too.”
Myra skipped a little pool of water and, reaching her taxi, balanced on the running board like a ballet dancer.
“Bye, Lilah. See you soon.”
“Good-bye, Myra. Good luck!”
And knowing Myra as she did, Lilah felt that her last remark was distinctly superfluous.
II
That was essentially the reason that one Friday night six weeks later Knowleton Whitney paid a taxi bill of seven dollars and ten cents and with a mixture of emotions paused beside Myra on the Biltmore steps.
The outer surface of his mind was deliriously happy, but just below that was a slowly hardening fright at what he had done. He, protected since his freshman year at Harvard from the snares of fascinating fortune hunters, dragged away from several sweet young things by the acquiescent nape of his neck, had taken advantage of his family’s absence in the West to become so enmeshed in the toils that it was hard to say which was toils and which was he.
The afternoon had been like a dream: November twilight along Fifth Avenue after the matinée, and he and Myra looking out at the swarming crowds from the romantic privacy of a hansom cab—quaint device—then tea at the Ritz and her white hand gleaming on the arm of a chair beside him; and suddenly quick broken words. After that had come the trip to the jeweler’s and a mad dinner in some little Italian restaurant where he had written “Do you?” on the back of the bill of fare and pushed it over for her to add the ever-miraculous “You know I do!” And now at the day’s end they paused on the Biltmore steps.
“Say it,” breathed Myra close to his ear.
He said it. Ah, Myra, how many ghosts must have flitted across your memory then!
“You’ve made me so happy, dear,” she said softly.
“No—you’ve made me happy. Don’t you know—Myra——”
“I know.”
“For good?”
“For good. I’ve got this, you see.” And she raised the diamond solitaire to her lips. She knew how to do things, did Myra.
“Good-night.”
“Good-night. Good-night.”
Like a gossamer fairy in shimmering rose she ran up the wide stairs and her cheeks were glowing wildly as she rang the elevator bell.
At the end of a fortnight she got a telegram from him saying that his family had returned from the West and expected her up in Westchester County for a week’s visit. Myra wired her train time, bought three new evening dresses and packed her trunk.
It was a cool November evening when she arrived, and stepping from the train in the late twilight she shivered slightly and looked eagerly round for Knowleton. The station platform swarmed for a moment with men returning from the city; there was a shouting medley of wives and chauffeurs, and a great snorting of automobiles as they backed and turned and slid away. Then before she realized it the platform was quite deserted and not a single one of the luxurious cars remained. Knowleton must have expected her on another train.
With an almost inaudible “Damn!” she started toward the Elizabethan station to telephone, when suddenly she was accosted by a very dirty, dilapidated man who touched his ancient cap to her and addressed her in a cracked, querulous voice.
“You Miss Harper?”
“Yes,” she confessed, rather startled. Was this unmentionable person by any wild chance the chauffeur?
“The chauffeur’s sick,” he continued in a high whine. “I’m his son.”
Myra gasped.
“You mean Mr. Whitney’s chauffeur?”
“Yes; he only keeps just one since the war. Great on economizin’—regelar Hoover.” He stamped his feet nervously and smacked enormous gauntlets together. “Well, no use waitin’ here gabbin’ in the cold. Le’s have your grip.”
Too amazed for words and not a little dismayed, Myra followed her guide to the edge of the platform, where she looked in vain for a car. But she was not left to wonder long, for the person led her steps to a battered old flivver, wherein was deposited her grip.
“Big car’s broke,” he explained. “Have to use this or walk.”
He opened the front door for her and nodded.
“Step in.”
“I b’lieve I’ll sit in back if you don’t mind.”
“Surest thing you know,” he cackled, opening the back door. “I thought the trunk bumpin’ round back there might make you nervous.”
“What trunk?”
“Yourn.”
“Oh, didn’t Mr. Whitney—can’t you make two trips?”
He shook his head obstinately.
“Wouldn’t allow it. Not since the war. Up to rich people to set ’n example; that’s what Mr. Whitney says. Le’s have your check, please.”
As he disappeared Myra tried in vain to conjure up a picture of the chauffeur
