Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/242

 and her belongings out of the house. But she still lingered on, as she was likely to do, during a short engagement; and Mrs. Phillips was now amiability itself to George and Amy both.

Her method of soothing Cope was to take him to the theatre and the opera in town: he could scarcely come to the house. It was now late in January and the opera season was near its end. People were tiring of their boxes, or had started South: it had become almost a work of merit to fill a friend's box for her. During the last week of the season, Mrs. Phillips was put in position to do this. She invited Cope, and took along Hortense, and found in the city itself a married pair who could get to the place and home again without her help. Lemoyne would have made six, and the third man; but he was not bidden. Why pack the box? A better effect was made by presenting, negligently, one empty seat. Lemoyne dressed Cope, however. He had brought to Churchton the outgrown evening clothes; and Cope, in his exuberance, bought a new pair of light shoes and white gloves. He looked well as he sat on the back seat of the limousine with Medora Phillips, during the long drive in; and he looked well—strikingly, handsomely well—in the box itself. Indeed, thought Medora, he made other young men in nearby boxes—young men of "means" and "position"—look almost plebeian. "He is charming," she said to herself, over and over again.

What about him "took" her? Was it his slenderness, his grace? Was it his youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of agreeable