Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/53

Rh sooner. That's why the only way for her,' my companion mused, 'is, I suppose, to stay. They wanted to put her with some people or other—to find some American family. But she says she's on her own feet.'

'And she's still in Florence?'

'No—I believe she was to travel. She's bent on the East.'

I burst out laughing. 'Magnificent Jane! It's most interesting. Only I feel that I distinctly should "know" her. To my sense, always, I must tell you, she had it in her.'

My relative was silent a little. 'So it now appears Becky always felt.'

'And yet pushed her off? Magnificent Becky!'

My companion met my eyes a moment. 'You don't know the queerest part. I mean the way it has most brought her out.'

I turned it over; I felt I should like to know—to that degree indeed that, oddly enough, I jocosely disguised my eagerness. 'You don't mean she has taken to drink?'

My visitor hesitated. 'She has taken to flirting.'

I expressed disappointment. 'Oh, she took to that long ago. Yes,' I declared at my kinswoman's stare, 'she positively flirted—with me!'

The stare perhaps sharpened. 'Then you flirted with her?'

'How else could I have been as sure as I wanted to be? But has she means?'

'Means to flirt?'—my friend looked an instant as if she spoke literally. 'I don't understand about the means—though of course they have something. But I have my impression,' she went on. 'I think that Becky' It seemed almost too grave to say.

But I had no doubts. 'That Becky's backing her?'

She brought it out. 'Financing her.'

'Stupendous Becky! So that morally then'

'Becky's quite in sympathy. But isn't it too odd?' my sister-in-law asked.