Dark power

Once more Di went through the house. Everything was in immaculate order, yet it had somehow the look of a place that had been savagely looted and was now abandoned and forlorn. All the bureau tops were swept bare, all the tables; in every room there were great gaps, where Angelina’s flamboyant things had been.

Angelina’s own room was simply horrible. Standing in the doorway, Di felt the tears rise in her eyes at the sight of that desolate neatness where only yesterday there had been such wild and joyous disorder.

“I’m--tired,” she said to herself, to excuse her weakness.

And she had reason to be tired. Angelina’s wedding had been like a cyclone, and Di had been whirled along like a leaf in the gale. She had done everything for Angelina; she had seen the caterers and arranged for the wedding breakfast, she had sent out the invitations, had listed the presents and engaged detectives to keep an eye on them. She had stood for hours while Angelina’s dresses were fitted upon her, she had packed Angelina’s trunks and bags. And she had interviewed the reporters.

There had been plenty of reporters, for Angelina’s wedding had been sensational, like everything else she did. The newspapers recalled to their readers the past exploits of the beautiful Angelina Herbert, her marriage at eighteen to Hiram Herbert, a millionaire of sixty, her suit for divorce three years later, charging her husband with artful “mental cruelty,” her trip through Borneo all alone--except for a cousin, a secretary, a camera-man and one or two others--her attempt to fly in her own plane to Mexico that had ended in a crash near Asheville.

This second marriage of hers was very satisfactory for newspapers. She had married young Porter Blessington, another millionaire, who had spent six months in prison for assaulting an officer in the discharge of his duties, during a little fracas in a night club. She had gone in her car to meet him as he came out of jail and they were married the next week.

Set down in black and white, these things did not appeal to Di; if she had merely read about her in the newspapers, she would have thought Angelina a pretty objectionable type. But in actual life she had loved her.

“She just--forgot,” she said to herself.

Just a little oversight on the part of the beautiful Angelina, to go off and leave Di without a penny. She had meant to do something regal, to make a lavish gift, but she had forgotten even to write the promised letter of recommendation that would help in getting another job.

With a sigh, she was closing the door of that desolately neat room, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror of the dressing-table. That image depressed her. She was pretty enough in a way, but it was not a way that anyone noticed; a slender, fair-haired girl with blue eyes and a detached, absent-minded air. She had exactly suited Angelina, because she was intelligent and well-bred, and marvelously patient, but there was only one Angelina. Other people would require different qualities in a secretary, more skill in shorthand and typing, a more business-like presence; other people would dislike her queer, cool little air of reserve. She knew, because before she had come to Angelina a year ago, she had gone about looking for a job.

“I’ve had more experience now,” she thought. “I’m not quite such a fool now.”