Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/279

 had set her to thinking of Bertram Cope, and she figured the same topic as uppermost in the mind of Basil Randolph.

"Well, you have about beaten me," she said.

"How so?" she made him ask, with an affectation of simplicity.

"You know well enough," she returned. "You have played off the whole University against my poor house, and you have won. Your influence with the president, your brother on the board of trustees If Bertram Cope has any gratitude in his composition " "Oh, well," she let him say, "I don't feel that I did much; and I'm not sure I'm glad for what I did do."

"You may regret it, of course. That other man is an uncertain quantity."

"Oh, come," he said; "you've had the inside track from the very start: this house and everything in it "

"You have a house of your own, now."

"Your dinners and entertainments "

"You have your own dinner-table."

"Your limousine, your chauffeur,—running to the opera and heaven knows where else "

"Taxis can always be had. Yes," she went on, "you have held the advantage over a poor woman cooped up in her own house. While I have had to stick here, attending to my housekeeping, you have been careering about everywhere,—you with a lot of partners and clerks in your office, and no compulsion to look in more than two or three times a week. Of