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"Who Is Sylvia?"
by
“Dear boy,” said she with an unsteady little laugh, for–as always–she shrank from his earnestness after she had deliberately roused it, “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You make me feel so shallow-pated and so small. I don’t want to talk about life and knowledge and love. And I don’t want any husband at all. What makes you so tragic this afternoon? You’re spoiling our last hour together. Come, be reasonable. Tell me what you think of Drewitt. Why do you suppose he did it? Did his wife and daughter know?”
“You’re quite sure about the other thing?”
“Unalterably sure. And, Jimmie, dear old Jimmie, there are two things I want you to do for me. The first is, to abandon forever and forever this ‘one topic’ of which, you are so proud. Will you?”
“I will not,” said Jimmie.
“And the second is: to fall in love with a girl on the boat. There is always a girl on a boat. Will you?”
“I will,” said Jimmie promptly. “It would be just what you deserve.”
* * * * *
Miss Knowles bore the absence of her most persistent and accustomed suitor with a fortitude not predicted by that self-confident young man. She danced and drove, lunched and dined, rode and flirted with undiminished zest, bringing, each day, new energy and determination to the task of enjoying herself.
The enjoyment of her neighbors seemed less important. She preferred that her part in the cotillion should be observed by a frieze of unculled wall-flowers. A drive was always pleasanter if it were preceded by a skirmish with her mother in which Miss Knowles should come off victorious with the victoria, while Mrs. Knowles accepted the coup de grace and the coupe. A flirtation–if her languid, seeming innocent monopoly of a man’s time and thoughts could be called by so gross a name–was more satisfying if it implied the breaking of vows and hearts and the mad jealousy of some less gifted sister; if it had, like a Russian folk song, a sob and a wail running through it.
Jimmie had never approved of these amusements and had never hesitated to express his opinion of them in terms which were intelligible even to her vanity. From the days when they had played together in the park she had dreaded his honesty and feared his judgments. “You’re such a poacher, Sylvia,” he told her once, “such an inveterate, diabolical Fly-by-Night, Will-o’-the-Wisp poacher. I sometimes think you’d condescend to take a shot at me if you didn’t know that I’m fair game. But you like to kill two birds with one stone; smash two hearts with one smile.”
During the weeks immediately following the departure of her mentor she devoted herself whole-heartedly to her favorite form of sport. Besides her unscrupulousness she was armed with her grandfather’s name, the riches of her dead father, her own beauty, and a mind capable of much better things. And, since Jimmie’s presence would have seriously interfered with the pleasures of the chase, she was rather glad than otherwise that he was not there to see–and comment.
Her mother bore his absence with a like stoicism. That astute matron had long and silently deprecated the regularity with which her Louis Quinze had groaned beneath one hundred and eighty pounds of ineligibility, the frequency with which a tall troup horse of spectacular gait and snortings could be descried beside her daughter’s English hunter in the park, the strange chain of coincidence by which at theater, house party, dinner, or even church, Jimmie smiling and unabashed, would find his way to her daughter’s side and monopolize her daughter’s attention.
In the excitement of the first stages of one of her expeditions into another’s territory, Jimmie’s first letter arrived. It was mailed at Honolulu, and consisted obediently of the cryptic statement: “There is no girl on the boat. She is a widow, but lots of fun.” And it changed the character of the invasion from a harmless survey of the land to a determined attack upon its fortresses. And so Gilbert Stevenson, millionaire dock owner, veteran of many seasons and more campaigns, found himself engaged to Miss Sylvia Knowles just when, after a long and careful courtship, he had decided to bestow his hand and name upon the daughter of the retired senior partner of his firm: “that dear little girl of old Marvin’s,” as he described the lady of his choice, “his only child and a good child, too.” He bore his surprise and honors with a courteous pomposity. Miss Knowles bore the situation with restraint and decorum. But that “dear little girl of old Marvin’s” could not bring herself to bear it at all and wept away her modest claims to prettiness and spirit in one desolate month.