And he could look
Breede over and write down in beautiful shorthand what he thought of
him.
But the other Breedes!
Mrs. Breede, a member of one of the very oldest families in Omaha, he
learned, terrified him exceedingly. She was an advanced dresser--he had
to admit that--but she was no longer beautiful. She was a plucked rose
that had been too long kept; the petals were rusting, crumpling at the
edges. He wondered if Breede had ever wished to be wrecked on a desert
island with her. She surveyed Bean through a glass-and-gold weapon with
a long handle, and on the two subsequent occasions when she addressed
him called him Mr. Brown. Once meeting him in the hall, she seemed to
believe that he had been sent to fix the telephone.
And the flapper's taller sister of the languishing glance--how quickly
had she awakened him from that golden dream of the low-lying atoll and
the wrecked ship in a far sea. She _did_ flirt with "any one," no doubt
about that. She adroitly revealed to Bean an unshakable conviction that
he was desperately enamoured of her, and that it served him right for a
presumptuous nobody. She talked to him, preened herself in his gaze, and
maddened him with a manner of deadly roguishness. Then she flew to exert
the same charm upon any one of the resplendent young men who were
constantly riding over or tooting over in big black motor-cars. They
were young men who apparently had nothing to do but "go in" for
things--riding, tennis, polo, golf.
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