Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/325

 see self-possession and lack of vanity in one so young and beautiful. Also that she has not that air of weary sophistication now fashionable in women."

"Yes," Figente said, with a meditative look at his friend.

The girl, Horta thought, was a clever one to be able to bamboozle two men so different but both pretty smart. Figente's remark that he had recognized her to be a Westerner too needed a reply. It was always best to appear frank if caught. "I myself am from the South Dakota Black Hills. Like Lucy, I don't go about pretending either. Except that I've been around longer, and am not quite so pretty." She smiled disarmingly. "I'd like to do something for that girl. I'm interested in her."

The right thing to have said, she thought, as Figente chuckled. The Citadel she had achieved and from whose ramparts she could unfearfully survey the social territory of respectability had seemed impregnable until this Denver upstart had had the nerve to say at the Chennonceaux "Don't call her Madam!" It was true enough that she was from a bleak farm in the Black Hills where, as a girl, she had been at the mercy of a vicious father and a stinking farmhand. It wasn't much better after she bolted. There had been waitress days in railroad towns as she worked her way West, accommodating all comers nights, until at last she had saved enough to start her own house in Denver with the best girls available. Jake, who had bought her out, was dead, and she had been in the clear and on top of the world. She sure would like to do something for Claudel—like pinning that pretty fly-by-night to a board before she had a chance to squeal.

Cynski stood, arms outstretched, asking "quite" from the restive guests who, having been served art, were impatient to begin their own entertainment.

"Where's the band, I want to dance," screamed a drunken redheaded girl whose short skirt exposed rolled stockings and thighs.

"I have surprise for our magnimmous host," Cynski announced with a peasant vigor that alarmed Figente who was feeling drowsy after the strain of preparations for the party, in which his interest was waning.

From now on it would be the same old thing, Figente thought. Mouth drooping, his eyes sagging in puffy sockets, he sat, uncomfortable on the hard Roman chair, looking at his guests with distaste. Rh