Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/43

Rh Tiffany's or the Newport Casino or Bailey's Beach and spot the best stones in America without letting the Four Hundred know we weren't one of them. After talks like this Bud would plant me in the highest-priced hotels, to study the women there at close range, and catch the trick of talking as they did, and wearing my clothes as they seemed to wear theirs.

I was quick enough at doing this, though it always disturbed me in a way I can't quite explain. But I knew, all the time, that my splendor was only a flash in the pan. I knew I was only cheap plate, an impostor. And all the while, deep down in my soul, I had that never-ending ache to be the real thing.

There were times, too, when Bud himself seemed to fail in what he pretended to be. He used to seem almost pathetic to me, on my off days, for I felt then that his clothes were flashier than they ought to be, that his Lord-Chesterfield manners weren't the manners of the other men in those softly carpeted hotels, that even his affectation of a Harvard accent was actory and artificial. This never really came home to me until I met another man. And that man was my Hero-Man.

Somewhere in her life, I think, every woman, must have a Hero-Man, whether he's the new min-