The Automobile Girls at Palm Beach: or, Proving Their Mettle Under Southern Skies. Crane Laura Dent
sat covertly taking stock of Miss Warren’s elaborate white lace gown and wondering why young girls ever insisted on aping so called “society” fashions. While Mollie and Grace speculated as to how long a call the Warrens were going to make.
Maud, totally oblivious that she had been weighed in the balance by four stern young judges, and found wanting, languidly conversed with Miss Stuart, in her most grown-up manner.
“Have you met the De Lancey Smythes, Miss Stuart?” she drawled. “They are too utterly charming. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe belongs to an old, old Southern family. She is a widow, with one daughter, Marian, a most delightful young woman. It was only through them that I was persuaded to come here.”
“Indeed,” replied Miss Sallie. “We arrived yesterday. Therefore we have met no one, as yet.”
“Of course not,” agreed Maud. “You really must meet them!”
“I should be pleased to meet any friends of yours, Miss Warren,” replied Miss Stuart courteously.
“By the way, Stuart,” said Mr. Warren, “what do you say to a sail in my launch, this afternoon? I should like to entertain some one besides the De Lancey Smythes. They are too fine for me. I am just a plain blunt man, and can’t stand too many extra frills. Maud, see to it that you don’t invite them. I absolutely refuse to be bothered with them, to-day.”
Maud flushed hotly at her father’s contemptuous allusion to the De Lancey Smythes. But restraining her feelings she turned to Miss Stuart with a forced attempt at graciousness.
“Won’t you come for a sail? It will be awfully good of you.”
“We should be delighted, I am sure,” replied Mr. Stuart, looking gravely at Maud. He then turned a compassionate gaze toward his friend, Mr. Warren. “That is, I mean we shall go with you, provided my sister has made no other plans.”
“Are you sure your launch won’t pitch, Mr. Warren?” inquired Miss Stuart.
“I am perfectly certain, Miss Stuart,” replied the millionaire. “The lake is like a mill pond to-day. There is not a ripple on it.”
While they had been making their plans for the afternoon, a man had been leaning idly against the railing of the piazza. He now strolled quietly away, without having appeared to notice any one of them, or to have overheard any of their conversation.
But Barbara had observed him. She had an unquenchable curiosity concerning faces. And this man appeared indefinably interesting.
Was it the foreign cut of his dark suit, conspicuous among the crowds of white ones worn by most of the men at Palm Beach? Or was it his strong, clean-shaven face with its rather heavy bull-dog jaw, its square chin, and keen gray eyes, a little too narrow for Bab’s taste? Bab did not know, then. But she took in the man’s whole expression, and the adverse opinion she silently formed, at that time, she never had occasion to change.
As the party was about to separate for luncheon two women appeared in a nearby doorway and stood looking up and down the piazza.
“Oh, there are dear Marian and her mother!” cried Maud, hurrying over to greet her friends.
“Dear Mrs. De Lancey Smythe,” exclaimed Maud, with a defiant look toward her father, “I do so want you to go out with us in our launch this afternoon. Won’t you let me introduce some new friends to you, who are going to sail with us?”
Mr. Warren turned red. A look of disappointment, verging on anger crept into his good-natured brown eyes as his daughter deliberately defied him.
The De Lancey Smythes glanced toward the Stuart party, with bored indifference.
Mrs. De Lancey Smythe made some low-voiced remark to Maud who nodded her head slightly. Whereupon mother and daughter moved toward Miss Stuart with an air of haughty condescension.
Mrs. De Lancey Smythe might have been anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five. She was tall, well-proportioned and a decided brunette. At a glance one would have decided her to be very handsome, but close observers would have noted a hard expression about the eyes and mouth that completely destroyed the effect of beauty. As for her daughter, Marian, she was a small, slender insignificant young woman who seemed entirely overshadowed by her mother’s personality.
Both mother and daughter were dressed perhaps a shade too elaborately for good taste, and there was something about them that immediately aroused a sense of vague disapproval in the minds of the Stuart party.
“Maud is always so thoughtful of her friends,” murmured Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, turning to Miss Sallie with well simulated appreciation. “She knows how fond we are of sailing.”
Miss Sallie looked sharply at the speaker. The De Lancey Smythes were evidently unaware of Mr. Warren’s animosity toward them. She was about to frame some polite excuse for not going on the launch, hoping to thus nip in the bud the proposed sail, when suddenly meeting Mr. Warren’s eyes, she saw an expression of entreaty in them that made her hesitate.
“I hope you and your ‘Automobile Girls’ will not disappoint me,” he said pleadingly.
“Thank you,” responded Miss Stuart. “We shall be pleased to go.”
With a formal bow to Mrs. De Lancey Smythe and her daughter, Miss Sallie marshaled her little force and left the piazza.
“Very charming people,” remarked Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, to Maud Warren, after they had disappeared. But there was an unpleasant light in her eyes, and a certain tightening of her lips that showed resentment at the manner of her reception by the Stuart party.
“We shall be obliged to play our cards very carefully,” she warned Marian, when in the privacy of their own apartment. “That Miss Stuart seems already inclined to be hostile. As for those girls – ”
“I think they’re the nicest looking girls I’ve seen for a long time. Ever so much nicer than Maud Warren,” exclaimed Marian.
“Hold your tongue,” commanded her mother angrily. “Don’t let me hear any more remarks of that kind, or you’ll have cause to regret them.”
Marian relapsed into sulky silence. She knew her mother only too well. Nevertheless she made up her mind to try honestly to make a good impression upon the first girls with whom she had ever wished to be friends.
Mr. Stuart and Mr. Warren did not at once follow their respective charges in to luncheon, but sat down on a wide settee in one corner of the piazza for a long talk. One topic of conversation followed another, until at last Mr. Warren lowered his voice and said:
“Stuart, I am going to ask a favor of you because I need your help more than I can say. You see,” he went on, his face flushing painfully with embarrassment, “I have tried to give my daughter the proper sort of care. I have certainly spared no money in the effort. But what can money, alone, do for a motherless girl?” His voice choked a little. “Perhaps I should have married again, if only on Maud’s account. But I tell you, Bob, I couldn’t. My wife’s memory is still too dear to me. No other woman has ever interested me.” He paused a moment, then looked away, while Mr. Stuart patted his shoulder sympathetically.
“And now,” went on poor Mr. Warren, shaking his head sadly, “my girl has fallen in with a lot of society people who are doing her more harm than good – for instance, these people you have just seen are among the number. You wonder, perhaps, why I don’t like the De Lancey Smythes. No one can deny that they make a good appearance but there’s something about the mother that I distrust. She’s not genuine, and although she tries to conceal it she’s not well-bred. Maud won’t believe it, and can’t be made to see it. But I can. Now I believe, if she goes about with your four nice, wholesome girls and a fine woman like Miss Stuart, she’ll open her eyes a trifle. And I want to ask you, old man, to stand by me and help me out. Ask your girls to help me save my girl from her own foolishness and the influence of just such people as these De Lancey Smythes. Will you help me Stuart, for ‘auld lang syne’?”
“Why of course I will, Tom,” replied good-natured Mr. Stuart warmly, grasping Mr. Warren’s hand. “I’ll tell my sister, Sallie, too. She’ll know just what