Usually she was content to lay all her positive requests to the
charge of mere caprice, but on this occasion she took the trouble to
intimate that there was a particular reason for wanting to see him. It
did not take him long to conclude that this particular reason had to do
with Claire Robson. That was why he yielded with a better grace than he
had been giving to his troublesome friend's disagreeable pressure.
Stillman knew that while Lily Condor was not precisely jealous of the
younger woman, she was distinctly envious--with the impersonal but acrid
envy of middle age for youth. The episode of the orchids still rankled.
He had to admit that in this instance his course had been tactless, but
he had ignored Mrs. Condor as a challenge to the presumption which he
had already begun to sense. She, while seeming definitely to evade the
real issue, had answered the challenge and he had paid for his temerity
a hundredfold. She had reminded him again and again in deft but none the
less positive terms that she was keeping a finger on the mainspring of
any advantage that came her way. Sometimes Stillman wondered whether she
would really be cattish enough to betray his confidence and bring Claire
Robson crashing down under the weight of the questionable position into
which his indiscretion had forced her. Would she really have the face to
publish abroad the pregnant fact that Ned Stillman was providing what
she had been pleased to designate as a meal-ticket for a young woman in
difficulty? For himself he cared little, except that he always shrank
instinctively from appearing ridiculous.
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