The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 30

"Perhaps it's a mistake," suggested Mrs. Bobby, not very impressively.

She was quite convinced to the contrary.

"Perhaps," Elizabeth acquiesced, "but if so, several other people have done the same thing. The Van Aldens never asked me to their dance, and I haven't had an invitation to a dinner for weeks. People forget one quickly in New York, don't they?" And she made another painful attempt at a laugh.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Bobby, "they think you don't want to go."

"I don't," said Elizabeth, "but they might at least give me the opportunity of refusing." And then there was a pause, in the midst of which Miss Joanna entered.

"Oh, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, "how glad I am to see you! Do tell Elizabeth that she ought to be in bed. You can see for yourself she has fever. It is the grippe, of course--she has never really got over it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bobby, looking doubtfully at Elizabeth, "it is the grippe, of course."

"The grippe is a convenient disease," said Elizabeth, in a low tone, "it means--so many things." She took up a sheet of paper and began to write hastily. "It does me good," she said "to employ myself. And I can't stay in bed--it drives me wild." Miss Joanna, as if weary of expostulation, moved to the window.

"Yes, I declare," she announced, in the tone of one who makes a not unexpected discovery, "there are those men again. Every time I look out, one or other of them seems to be watching the house."

"Watching the house?" repeated Mrs. Bobby, startled.

"Yes, that's what it looks like, at least. And the other day, when I went out, one of them stared at me so--most impertinent. I declare, if it goes on, we shall have to make a complaint. And one of them followed Elizabeth--didn't he, my dear?"

"I thought he did," said Elizabeth, indifferently, "but I didn't notice much. I have thought several times lately that there were people following me. Perhaps it is because my head feels so queer."

"What do the men look like?" asked Mrs. Bobby.

"Oh, quite respectable," said Miss Joanna. "They don't look like beggars, certainly. Cornelia thought they looked rather like detectives--she said they made her feel nervous; but that, of course, is quite ridiculous."

"Quite ridiculous," echoed Mrs. Bobby. To herself she was saying, "Ah, that trip abroad!"

"Eleanor has an invitation for Mrs. Lansdowne's ball, auntie," said Elizabeth, suddenly changing the subject, which did not seem to interest her, by the introduction of one that evidently rankled in her mind. "She thinks it is odd I wasn't asked. I told you," she went on, with a bitter smile, "that people are giving me up since my engagement was broken off."

"But that is nonsense," remonstrated Miss Joanna, in distress. "Tell her," she said, turning pleadingly to Mrs. Bobby, "that that isn't so."

Mrs. Bobby started up and took Elizabeth's hand. "I don't know," she said, speaking with strange earnestness, "who gives you up, Elizabeth dear, and I don't care. I never will. Remember that, dear child. I will stand by you whatever happens." And then, as if conscious of having said too much, or fearful perhaps of saying more, Mrs. Bobby swept hastily from the room, leaving her hearers petrified.

Miss Joanna was the first to speak. "How very strange she was!" she said, in a low voice. "What--what do you think she meant?"

Elizabeth was staring vacantly at the door, but at her aunt's words she turned.

"I don't know," she said, "what she meant, but one thing I understand--that my social career is ended." With a little pale smile, she swept aside the cards of invitation, locked them into a drawer and left the room.

_Chapter x.x.xI_

Mrs. Bobby regained her carriage, and consulting her engagement book, she ordered her coachman to drive her to the house of one of her friends, whose "day at home" it was. It was a sudden resolution. She had gone about very little that winter, since she had no longer the incentive of chaperoning Elizabeth, and had not paid a visit for weeks, on the plea of mourning for an uncle. But now she set her teeth and said to herself that she must mingle with the world to find out, if possible, what the world was saying.

Was it fancy, or did she distinguish, as she stood in the hall of Mrs.

Van Alden's house leaving cards, amidst the hum of voices in the drawing-room, words that bore upon her own fevered anxiety? "Shocking affair," and "so she is really involved in it"--surely she heard those sentences. And then the conversation ceased abruptly as the butler drew aside the portiere and she stood for a moment on the threshold.

Her eyes were bright, her head erect; she glanced around taking mental stock as it were of the company. Five or six women were seated about a blazing wood fire, with an air unusual at functions of this kind of having come to stay and of forming--or this again might have been her fancy--a sort of council of justice. There was Mrs. Lansdowne, to whose ball Elizabeth had not been invited; and there was Sibyl Hartington, and one or two others who knew Mrs. Bobby and did not, as it happened, love her very much. "Enemies," she thought, drawing her breath sharply, "and discussing Elizabeth and me! It's the same thing--I'm sure I feel as if it were I under suspicion." Eleanor Van Antwerp had certainly never known such a feeling before, but her bearing had never been more instinct with the nonchalant confidence of a woman who seems absolutely unconscious of her position, for the reason that it has never been questioned.

"I seem to have interrupted the conversation," she observed, lightly, after she had been rather nervously greeted and kissed by her hostess, and had taken her place in the circle. "Some one was telling a very interesting story--I caught fragments of it as I came in." She glanced her eye round the group. "It was you, Kitty, I think," she said.

"Won't you--please--begin the story over again and tell it for my benefit?"

"Kitty," thus appealed to, colored and bit her lip. "Oh, the story isn't really worth repeating," she said, hastily. She had no wish to offend Mrs. Van Antwerp, and was heartily wis.h.i.+ng that she had not spoken so loud. Sibyl Hartington helped her out by observing, with her placid smile:

"It's a story about a friend of yours, my dear Eleanor, so Kitty is afraid to tell it."

"About a friend of mine?" said Mrs. Bobby, and she opened her eyes very wide. "Then there's all the more reason," she said, decidedly, "why I should hear it."

Her glance challenged the group, but no one spoke and at last the hostess interposed. "My dear Eleanor, I'm sorry you should have heard anything about it. We were only talking about poor Elizabeth Van Vorst, and regretting that there is all this unfortunate gossip about her. For my part, I don't believe there is a word of truth in what they say, but it is certainly--uncomfortable."

"It makes it hard to know what to do," said Mrs. Lansdowne, a woman with a deep ba.s.s voice and an air of being not so much indifferent to, as unconscious of other people's feelings. "I couldn't for instance ask Miss Van Vorst to my ball while there are these queer rumors about her. I was sorry to leave out any friend of yours, Mrs. Van Antwerp; but if a young woman gets herself talked about, no matter how or why, I can't encourage her--it's against my principles. Let the girl behave herself, I say, and keep out of the papers. I'm sure that's simple enough."

"It's not always so simple," said Mrs. Bobby, and though the indignant color had rushed into her cheeks, her tone was seraphic, "not so simple for every one as it is for your daughters, Mrs. Lansdowne." A subdued smile as she spoke went the round of the circle. Fortunately Mrs. Lansdowne was not quick in her perceptions.

"No, it's true," she admitted, "my daughters have had unusual advantages. I can't expect every one to come up to the same standard.

But one has to draw the line somewhere, and when a girl has done such queer things as Miss Van Vorst, there seems nothing for it but to drop her."

"But what--what has poor Elizabeth done?" asked Mrs. Bobby, with eyes of innocent wonder, and again there followed an awkward silence.

"Well, you know, Eleanor, they tell very queer stories," the hostess said at last, deprecatingly. "I never pay any attention to gossip, but these things are sometimes forced upon one. Haven't you seen that thing in _Scandal_?"

"I don't," said Mrs. Bobby, unmoved, "read '_Scandal_,' Mary."

"And _Chit Chat_," chimed in some one else. "There was a long paragraph in _Chit Chat_. It seems that she was mixed up in some way in that dreadful poisoning case. They say that she was actually married to that young Halleck."

"At the same time that she was engaged to Julian Gerard," said Mrs.

Hartington, with her calm smile. "It's no wonder that he, poor man, when he found it out, got out of the affair as best he could."

Mrs. Bobby looked steadily at the speaker. "As a friend of Mr.

Gerard's, Sibyl," she said, "I can state on his authority that the engagement was broken by Miss Van Vorst."

Sibyl Hartington's calm, faintly amused smile again rippled across her face. "I never doubted, my dear Eleanor," she said, "that Mr. Gerard is a gentleman."

The entrance of another visitor at that moment was not altogether unwelcome to Mrs. Bobby, who felt that she was being worsted; but the new-comer immediately continued the same subject.

"I've just been hearing the most extraordinary news," she exclaimed, sitting on the edge of her chair, and too much excited to notice Mrs.

Bobby's presence, "I heard it at luncheon. They say that Elizabeth Van Vorst"--But here the speaker suddenly caught sight of Mrs. Bobby, and stopped short.

"Well, what do they say?" said Mrs. Bobby, with rather a bitter smile.

"Don't keep us in suspense, Miss Dare, and above all, don't mind my feelings. I would rather know the worst of this."

"Well, I don't believe there is any truth in it. They say that she is really seriously implicated in that dreadful poisoning case; that the police have letters she wrote to Halleck, and all sorts of unpleasant things. But of course it's impossible--a girl like that, whom we all know!"

"Do we?" said Mrs. Hartington, softly. "Do you think that we, any of us, know much about her? You didn't, Eleanor, did you?"--turning to Mrs. Bobby--"You just took her up in that charming, impulsive way of yours--didn't you?--because people in the Neighborhood didn't have much to do with her, and you felt sorry for her?"