"Now that you are here," he said awkwardly, "she will be heard of no more."
Although he never knew it, that speech advanced him leagues in Alice Wilstead's favor. The genuine sincerity of his tone would have warmed the heart of any woman standing with reluctant feet where the brook of _passé_ joins the river of middle-age.
Alice regarded the opals on her fingers (she was born in October) with a pleased yet humorous smile.
"Accepting your inference, what chance has an elderly widow against a young and lovely actress?"
Preston started. She had played trumps when he was least expecting them. "Then you know--" he said.
"That Miss Fuschia Fleming is a star that will shoot madly from her sphere to brighten the firmament of New York this spring."
"I supposed, of course, that was her game," he said soberly. But he was thinking not so much of Fuschia Fleming as of that after revelation which this delightful woman had made. A widow of charm, of sparkle, of money. One felt the latter. She unconsciously exhaled it. And best asset of all, the old and valued friend of Cresswell Hepworth. Preston was no cold-blooded schemer, neither was he an ardent, impetuous Hotspur. He merely calculated chances, not only by virtue of temperament but training, and when this jewel of a chance flashed its dazzling rays, he instinctively estimated its weight, the accuracy of the cutting and possible value.
Therefore Mr. Hayward Preston made such hay in the next few minutes, that when he left, or rather when Mrs. Wilstead dismissed him, he received another of that particular brand of smiles and walked home with his head among the stars.
One morning, shortly before she left for New York, Miss Fuschia Fleming and her father sat in the sitting-room of their suite in the hotel at Santa Barbara. The sunshine without lay broad and white and dazzling. Within it seemed to be reflected, although through many tonal shadings in subdued, but still golden points of emphasis. There were bowls of yellow roses, there were baskets of oranges and lemons, there was Fuschia herself in a morning gown as pale as the gold of her hair which looked paler than ever in contrast to a great tawny, orange-colored flower, which she had leaned from her window and plucked a short while before and thrust carelessly above one ear.