Harriet and the Piper | Page 2

relentless,
she glowed like a flower herself in the sweet and enervating heat of the
summer's first warm day. She wore a filmy gown of a dull cream colour,
with daring great poppies in pink and black and gold embroidered over
it; her lacy black hat, shadowing her clear forehead and smoke-black
hair, was covered with the soft pink flowers. She was the tiniest of
women, and the little foot, that, in its transparent silk stocking and
buckled slipper, was close to Anthony's hand, was like a child's.
The man was twice her size, and as dark as she, earnest, eager, and
to-day with a troubled expression clouding his face. It was to banish
that look, if she might, that Isabelle had deliberately stopped him here.
She had been behaving badly toward him, and in her rather
irresponsible and shallow way she was sorry for it. Isabelle was a
famous flirt, her husband knew it, everyone knew it. There was always
some man paying desperate court to her, and always half-a- dozen other
men who were eager to be in his place. Now it was a painter, now a
singer, now one of the men of her husband's business world. They sent
her orchids and sweets, and odd bits of jewellery, and curious fans and
laces, and pictures and brasses, and quaint pieces of china. They sent
her tremendously significant letters, just the eloquent word or two, the
little oddity of date or signature or paper that was to impress her with
an individuality, or with the depth of a passion. Isabelle lived for this,
went from one adventure to another with the naive confidence of a
woman whose husband smiles upon her playing, and whose position is
impregnable.
But this boy, this Anthony, was different. In the first place he was
young, he was but twenty-six. In the second place he was, or had been,
her own son's closest friend. Ward Carter was twenty- two, and his
mother nineteen years older.
Yes, she was forty-one, although neither she nor her mirror admitted it
readily. Anthony, she thought, must realize it. He must realize that his
feeling for her was unthinkable, not to say absurd. It had taken her by
surprise, this last conquest. She had known the boy only a few weeks.
Ward had brought him home for a visit, at Easter, but Isabelle, besides

admiring his unusual beauty and identifying him with the Pope fortune,
had paid him small attention. She had been absorbed then in the
wretched conclusion of the Foster affair. Derrick Foster had been
distressing and annoying her unmercifully. After the warm and
delightful friendship of several months, after luncheons and teas, opera
and concerts in the greatest harmony, Derrick Foster had had the daring,
the impudence, to imply--to insinuate--
Well, Isabelle had gotten rid of him, although she could not yet think of
him without scarlet colour in her cheeks. And it had been on a
particularly trying afternoon, when the unshed tears of anger and hurt
pride had been making her fine eyes heavier and more mysterious than
usual, that this nice boy, this handsome friend of Ward, had gone riding
with her, and had shown such charming sympathy for her dark mood.
They had had tea at the Country Club, and Tony, as she had begun at
once to call him, had been wonderfully amusing and soothing. Isabelle,
when they came back to the house, had turned impulsively in the hall,
had laid her small hand, in its dashing gauntlet, upon his big shoulder.
"You've carried me over an ugly bog, Little Boy!" she had said. "I like
you--such a lot!"
That was six weeks ago, but in those short six weeks the little boy that
she had patronized had entirely upset her preconceived ideas of him.
He was young, and he was absurd, but he did not know it, and Isabelle
began to feel the difficulty of keeping the whole world from
discovering it before he did. He made no secret of his passion. He came
straight to her in any company; he never looked at anybody else. The
young girls to whom she introduced him bored him, he was rude to
them. To her own daughter Nina, seventeen years old, his attitude was
almost paternal; he ignored Ward as if their friendship had never been.
Toward Richard Carter, who was pleasantly hospitable toward the lad,
he showed an icy and trembling politeness.
Isabelle saw now that she had made a mistake. She should have killed
this affair at the very beginning. Tony was not like the older men,
willing to play the game with just a little scorching of fingers.
Appearances meant nothing to Tony, and she had let the play go too far

now to convince him that she did not