Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 79: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A HOUSE ON THE GRAND CANAL. but three years old—and though Janet ad- mitted twenty-three to four of her guests, she was only as old as her social birth— has induced the Duc de Fouchard Roche and his pretty American duchesse, Milly England, of Washington and Newport, and the Prince Augustin de Loret, in the opin- ion of authorities the best catch on the con- tinent, ‘to accept her hospitality for a month, she could easily forgive the presence of an insignificant suitor with whom she had believed herself in love once upon a time before there was so much money. Janet knew that the four had honored her for no honest liking of her or her fam- ily; that they allowed themselves to be put under obligations for the sake of the Wheel- wright millions and a month free from bills. ‘“Poor gilded flies around the honey pot,” she thought, half resentful, half en- vious. “If they play my game I don’t mind playing theirs.” Beside her sprawled the duchesse, scanti- ly though effectively clad, her pretty, scheming little head buried in the duc’s shoulder. Janet admired Alice Fouchard Roche as much as she admired any living human being, for Alice had been poor and pretty, and by sheer cleverness, backed by beauty and charm, not money, had amaz- ingly married the duc, also poor and pretty, who had come to America in search of a fortune, avowing that he would not look twice at Ninon de l’Enclos if she were not rich. She had carried him off from under the very noses of half a dozen girls, who, though neither poor nor pretty, were as de- termined to wear a famous title and be con- nected with half the old French nobility and a goodly portion of the English, and now she flaunted her duc and her poverty in their faces and was brave and gay and malicious. On the next couch lay Milly English, socially beyond criticism, a personality and a power, trying to hold the vagrant atten- tion of Augustine de Loret, for whose sake she had accepted Janet’s invitation. He, giving her but half his face, had ardent eyes on Janet. “She looks like an amorous hatchet,” thought Janet, and smiled at De Loret. Of the fifth and unimportant guest, Bob 713 Talley, Janet was no more thinking than of the sand on which she lay, but a sudden flow of contentment through her heart made her lean over to give his shoulder a friendly pat. At that moment she was sorry for him, although she thought him stupid to stick to a losing game—sorry for him out of her boundless contentment, for she sensed what a shock it would be to him when she accepted the proposal she knew Augustine de Loret had come to Venice to make her. ‘ The duchess ed her head to look down the white*beach that was so white, at the blue sea that was so blue and so bright it shone with the sickly luster of decaying fruit, and then brought her eyes back to Janet. “Tell me about this haunted palace of yours,” she said, accentuating the normal drawl of her lazy voice. “I am crazy about ghosts, all except the ghosts of wronged ladies who walk at night carrying their heads in their hands. We stayed in four houses in England this year, and they all had headless, naughty ladies haunting them. England is so monotonous. The ghosts are as alike as the dinners. But a Venetian ghost ought to have something different about it. Tell me the story, Janet. These people are being so dull that unless you curdle my blood with horror I am liable to go to sleep.” There was more than a hint of patronage in her voice. Not even the splendid, noble ghost would she willingly leave untouched by her secret contempt for everything that pertained to the Wheelwrights. In a hun- dred ways she pricked her friends with tiny insults, the more content to have the power to sting as she knew how valuable she was to Janet and how greatly she and her im- pecunious duke needed the aid of the Wheelwright millions. Janet smiled serenely at her, impervious to the pin pricks of a poor duchesse since she so soon would be a wealthy princess. “Do you think this is an appropriate setting for such a story? Ours is a very superior ghost, I’d have you know, and surely his tale rates an impressive back- ground.” There was a murmur of dissent from oO COMmiGoooks (S@)