She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so
spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard
more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her
high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. But that was
six years ago. And now--this! Magsie had evidently decided to make
herself useful, but she had managed to make herself beautiful and
fascinating as well. She was in mourning now for the good-hearted old
benefactress who had left her a nest-egg of some fifteen thousand
dollars, and Rachael noticed with approval that it was correct
mourning: simple, severe, Parisian. Nothing could have been more
becoming to the exquisite bloom of the young face than the soft, clear
folds of filmy veiling; under the small, close-set hat there showed a
ripple of rich golden hair. The watching woman thought that she had
never seen such self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny.
The modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young
eyes, the general air of requesting an appreciative world to be amusing
and interesting, or to expect nothing of Miss Magsie Clay, these things
caused Rachael a deep, hidden chuckle of amusement. Little Magsie had
turned out to be something of a personality! Why, she was even
employing a distinct and youthfully insolent air of keeping Warren by
her side merely on sufferance--Warren, the cleverest and finest man in
the room, who was more than twice her age!
"To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated to
herself, catching a glimpse of Charlotte, towed by her mother,
uncomfortable, ignored, blinking through her glasses. And when she and
Warren were in the car homeward bound, she spoke admiringly of Magsie.
"Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really, she's quite
extraordinary!"
Warren smiled absently.
"She's a terribly spoiled little thing," he remarked. "She's out for a
rich man, and she'll get him!"
"I suppose so," Rachael agreed, casting about among the men she knew
for an appropriate partner for Miss Clay.
"Suppose so!" he echoed in good-humored scorn. "Don't you fool
yourself, she'll get what she's after! There isn't a man alive that
wouldn't fall for that particular type!"
"Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked in surprise.
"Well, watch and see!"
"Perhaps--" Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she
asked.
He glanced at his watch. "Six-ten."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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