But Eleanor reached up and took his face between her hands.  “As for you,” she said, “you are always just a boy.  Sometimes it is impossible to believe you are older than I—­I think I should have been your mother.”

CHAPTER III

NINA

A ponderous, glossy, red Limousine turned in under the wrought bronze portico of one of the palatial houses of upper Fifth Avenue.  As the car stopped, the face of a woman of about forty appeared at its window.  Her expression was one of fretful annoyance, as though the footman who had sprung off the box and hurried up the steps to ring the front doorbell had, in his haste, stumbled purposely.  The look she gave him, as he held the door open for her to alight, rebuked plainly his awkward stupidity.

Yet, in spite of Mrs. Randolph’s petulant expression, it was evident that she had distinct claims to prettiness, though of the carefully prolonged variety.  The art of the masseuse was visible in that curious swollen smoothness of the skin which gives an effect of spilled candle-wax—­its lack of wrinkles never to be mistaken for the freshness of youth.  Much also might be said of the skill with which the “original color” of her hair had been preserved.  She was very well “done,” indeed; every detail proclaimed expenditure of time—­other people’s—­and money—­her own.  She trotted, rather than walked, as though bored beyond the measure of endurance and yet in a hurry.  Following her was a slim, fair-haired young girl, who, leaving the footman to gather up a number of parcels, turned to the chauffeur.  Even in giving an order, there was a winning grace in her lack of self-consciousness, and her voice was fresh in its timbre, enthusiastic in its inflection.

“Henri,” she said, “you had better be here at three.  The steamer sails at four, and an hour will not give me any too much time.  Have William come for Celeste and the steamer things at two.  The Panhard will be best, as there is plenty of room in the tonneau.”  Then she ran lightly up the steps and into the house.

The first impression of a visitor upon entering the hall might have been of emptiness.  In contrast to the over-elaborateness characteristic of all too many American homes and hotels, obtruding their highly colored, gold-laden ornament, the Randolph house rather inclined toward an austerity of decoration.  But after the first general impression, more careful observation revealed the extreme luxury of appointments and details.  The one flaw—­if one might call it such—­was that every article in the entire house was spotlessly, perfectly brand-new.  The Persian rugs, pinkish red in coloring and made expressly to tone in with the gray white marble of the hall, were direct from the looms.  The banister, of beautiful simplicity, was as newly wrought as the stainless velvet with which the hand-rail was covered.  From the hall opened faultlessly executed rooms, each correctly