Helena moved her shoulders impatiently. For an instant she was silenced. Then: "But marriage needn't necessarily put an end to your playwriting. A good marriage--as with Venetia--ought even to help, I should think."
"But you persist in forgetting I'm not a fortune hunter."
"But," she countered smartly, "Marbridge is."
He said: "Oh--Marbridge!" as if dumbfounded.
She smiled quietly, a very wise and superior smile.
To this point the car had been steadily ascending; the noise of the motor, together with the frequent stutterings of the exhaust with the muffler cut-out, had been sufficient to disguise the substance of their communication from the ears of the operator. Now, however, they surmounted the highest point and began the more gradual descent to the Tankerville estate. And with less noise there was consequently very little talking on the part of the two on the rear seat. For which Matthias wasn't altogether sorry. He wanted time to think--to think about Venetia Tankerville in the new light cast upon her by his aunt's concluding remark: as affected by her friendship with Vincent Marbridge.
In the natural swing of events, it would never have occurred to him to consider Marbridge's attentions seriously. Nobody ever took Marbridge seriously, he believed, aside from a few exceptionally foolish women....
Noiselessly the car slipped down a mile-long avenue to the brow of a promontory. On either hand Tanglewood's long parked terraces fell away to the water: on the left the harbour of Port Madison, on the right, Long Island Sound.
Matthias was barely conscious of these things; his mood was haunted by an extraordinarily clear vision of Vincent Marbridge: not tall, but by no means short; a trifle stout, but none the less a well-knit figure of a man, and tremendously alive; dark, with a broad, blunt, good-humoured face and seal-brown eyes that were exceedingly handsome and expressive; keen-witted and accomplished, knowing almost everybody and every place and thing worth knowing; hedonist and egoist, selfish, unscrupulous, magnetic, fascinating.
Impressed, Matthias frowned. His aunt eyed him covertly, with a sly, semi-affectionate, semi-malicious smile shadowing her mouth.
Slackening its pace, the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. Matthias pulled himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. They turned toward the house.
