At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant novel-reading and theater-going.
On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena\'s invitation she went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks\' savings with that delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy hoarded dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her association with Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)
Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of its kind that she had ever owned.
As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch at Martin\'s, she told herself that she would never know greater happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.
But after luncheon—over which they lingered until they were quite alone in the eastern dining-room—with some hesitation, and having assured himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case, and passed it across the table.
"I\'d meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward smile. "But I don\'t think I can wait...."
Joan opened the box—and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!
Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life; and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....
Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature calculated to dissipate that glamour—save, perhaps, in one untoward circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided against.
A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan\'s way was made smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville\'s obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at her ease) facilitated matters immensely.
Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid—was, indeed, given no reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them herself, she received at Helena\'s hands the indispensable service of "hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means overshadowed by Helena\'s or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of their terrors.
Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of Tanglewood....
But it wasn\'t until the first hours of a still and splendid September Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....
Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the man?uvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow, strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.
The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun—the season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame in the mortal passion of Indian summer.
In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet ineluctable hint of melancholy....
From landward, with unusual resonance in the deep quiet of that hour, sounded the long, dull, whining purr of a motor-car.
Helena lowered the glasses, turned an ear to the sound, and came slowly back to the tea-table and Joan. Her faint smile, together with a slight elevation of her delicately darkened brows, indicated surprise.
Engrossed in their argument, Matthias and Tankerville gave no heed to the threatened visitation.
Resentfully, Joan detached her attention from the diamond Matthias had given her, and at discretion tossed aside a cigarette which she had been pretending to like because Helena smoked quite openly, and it was consequently the smart thing to do.
Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces toward the house, paused, waited. A woman\'s laugh with an accent of cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. She was unquestionably the loveliest creature Joan had ever seen. Without moving, but staring, the girl sat transfixed with distrust and poignant envy.
With a cry of wonder—"Venetia!"—Helena ran to greet these unpresaged guests.
Meeting, the two women indulged in an embrace almost theatrically perfunctory. The commonplaces of such situations were breathlessly exchanged. Then Helena, disengaging turned to the man and extended a hand.
"Well, Mr. Marbridge!..." she cried with a light note of semi-reproof in her laughter.
At this, with a brightening smile, Marbridge bent over her hand, saying something indistinguishable to Joan.
She was watching the meeting between Matthias and Venetia Marbridge.
He held both her hands, and she permitted him to retain them, for a longer moment of silent greeting than Joan thought necessary. But this circumstance alone betrayed ............