Gladys was not much given to trusting her father's judgment of women, or his accuracy of statement, where he had an object in view, and so that part of the dispatch she counted as so many superfluous words, paid for without occasion; but she understood clearly enough that her papa, for some reason connected with business--all his reasons centred in business--meant her to make as much as possible of Helen Braine, and so she arrived in the city fully prepared to pretend a great liking for the wild Westerner with big feet, whom she expected to find there.
Perhaps the agreeable surprise helped, but, whatever the cause, Gladys Van Duyn fell in love with Helen at first sight, and went rejoicingly back to Dorp House, the family place on the Sound, where the Van Duyns were accustomed to entertain their friends by platoons, and make a revel of the summer.
Gladys was a prudent young women, whose twenty summers had not been misspent; so, when she saw Helen and arranged to have her for a guest during an indefinite period, she decided that Grayson should put his yacht out of commission immediately, and rest himself with a little stay in Switzerland. Grayson accepted the arrangement, under the impression that he had been eagerly contemplating something of the sort for months, and his departure was made so promptly that the only thought he had time to give to Helen was that she was a "dooced fine woman, don't you know."
Braine remained in the city during the day, but joined Helen in the evening at the sumptuous Van Duyn summer place.
Helen was puzzled to understand it all, and in her bewilderment she questioned Edgar a little as to the cause of her sudden finding of favor in the eyes of people who had known nothing of her till then, and that, too, in a society which is not much given to looking beyond its own borders for people to "take up."
Braine laughed and said: "You are much too modest, Helen. You never did appreciate your own charms," and Helen, upon thinking the matter over, found a sufficient explanation in the thought that nobody could possibly come in contact with her Edgar without recognizing his superiority of mind and character, and wanting to make him an intimate. "These men have met him down town," she reflected, "and have been charmed with him, of course. In order to get as close to him as possible, they have taken up poor me. Well, that places a duty on me. I must acquit myself as well as I can, for dear Ed's sake."