Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1922-02-09


most effort to obliterate herself could
not quite keep her from notice. Ole
Mrs. Carter, who for reasons perfectly
comprehensive in an old lady who
had once been handsome herself, de-
tested Harriet, and said to her
daughter-in-law that in her opinion
there was something queer about the
girl. :!
She was of that always-arresting
type that combines a warm dusky skin
with blue eyes and fair hair The
eyes, in her case, were a soft smoky
blue, set in thick and inky black
lashes, and the hair was brassy gold,
banded carelessly but trinity about her
rather broad forehead. Her mouth
was wide, deep crimson, thin-lipped;
it was mouth of secrets and Of mys-
terry, of character, a mouth that had
known the trembling of pain and grief,
perhaps, but a firm mouth now, and
a beautiful one.
Looking at her, an artist would
have fancied her a bold and charming
and bOyish-looking little girl, fifteen
years ago, with that Greek chin and
that tawny name would have seen her
seXless and splendid in her early teens,
with a fiat breast and an untamed eve.
And a romancer might have wondered
what paths had led her, in the superb
realization of her beautiful woman
hood, at twenty-seven, to this subor-
dinate position in the home of a self
made rich man, and this conventional
tea table on a terrace over the Hud-
son.
Nearly half-past five, Nina" she
said, presently. "Go and change and
brush, that's a darling! You look
rather tumbled."
Nina, reaching for a marron. obedi-
emily wandered away and immediately
the empty chair beside Harriet was
taken by a newcomer, Richard Carter
himself, the owner of all this smiling
estate, who had come up from the
little launch at the landing, had
changed hastily into white flannels.
Harriet saw at a glance, and had un-
eXpectedly Joined them for tea.
"Tea, Mr.. Carter?" Harriet ven
tured.
He was watching his wife with a
sort of idle interest. She had to re-
peat her invitation.
"If you please, Miss FieldI Tea
sounded right, somehow, to me today.
It's been a terrible day?'
81 can imagine it !" Harriet's voice
was pleasantly commonplace. But the
moment had it's thrill for her. This
lean, tall. tired man, with his abstract
nervous, clever hands, loomed in oddly
manner, his perfunctory courtesies, his
heroic proportions in Harriet's life.
His face was keen and somewhat
lined under a smooth crest of slightly
graying hair; he smiled very rarely,
but there was a certain kindness in
his gray Aeyes, when Nina or Ward
or his wife turned to him, that Har-
riet liked.
For Harriet he had hardly dozen
words a year. He merely smiled
kindly when she thanked him for the
Christmas gift that bore his un-
touched card; If she went to her sis
ter for day or two, he gave her only
nod of greeting when she came back.
Now and then he asked with sharp
interest about Nina's teeth or his
mothers headache.
| But Harriet had known other types
of men, and for his very sflences, for
his Indifference, she had begun to adj
mire him long ago. She had not been
born in this atmosphere of pleasure
and ease and riches; she was not en-
tirely untitled to judge a man.
Isabelle was always breezily civil to
her husband; he had long ago van
ished as completely from among the
vital elements of her life as if he were
dead, perhaps more than IL he were
dead. She thought-if she thought
about him at all-that he never saw
her little affairs; she supposed him
perfectly satisfied with his home and
children and club and business, and
incidentally with his beautiful figure
head oe a wife. They had Quarreled
distressingly, several years ago, when
he had bored her with references to
her duty" and her influence over
Nina, and her obligations to her true
self But that had all stopped long
since, and now Isabelle was free to
sleep late, to dress at leisure, to make
what engagements she pleased, to see
the persons who interested her. Rich
ard never interfered; never was there
a more perfectly discreet and gener-
Gus husband. Half the women Isabelle
knew were attempting to live exactly
as she did, to cultivate "suitors," and
drift about in an atmosphere of new
gowns and adulation and orchids and
softly lighted drawing rooms, and in
cessant playing with fire; it was the
accepted thing, in Isabelle's circle,
and that she was more successful in
it than other women was not at all
| to her diScredit.