The Buccaneers Read Online Free PDF

to stick up for your friend Conchita. You like her, don’t you?”
    But Mrs. St. George’s resentment was stiffening. She could fight for her daughters, helpless as she was for herself. “If you’re going to rely on the girls to choose who they associate with! They say the girl’s name isn’t Closson at all. Nobody knows what it is, or who any of them are. And the brother travels round with a guitar tied with ribbons. No nice girls will go with your daughters if you want them seen everywhere with those people.”
    The Colonel stood frowning before his wife. When he frowned she suddenly forgot all her reasons for opposing him, but the blind instinct of opposition remained. “You wouldn’t invite the Clossons to join us at supper tonight?” he suggested.
    Mrs. St. George moistened her dry lips with her tongue. “Colonel—”
    â€œYou won’t?”
    â€œGirls, your father’s joking,” she stammered, turning with a tremulous gesture to her daughters. She saw Nan’s eyes darken, but Virginia laughed—a laugh of complicity with her father. He joined in it.
    â€œGirls, I see your mother’s not satisfied with the present I’ve brought her. She’s not as easily pleased as you young simpletons.” He waved his hand to the dressing-table, and Virginia caught up the morocco box. “Oh, Mother—is this for you? Oh, I never saw anything so beautiful! You must invite Mrs. Closson, just to see how envious it makes her. I guess that’s what Father wants you to do—isn’t it?”
    The Colonel looked at her sympathetically. “I’ve told your mother the plain truth. Closson’s put me on to a good thing, and the only return he wants is for you ladies to be a little humane to his women-folk. Is that too unreasonable? He’s coming today, by the afternoon train, and he’s bringing two young fellows with him, by the way—his step-son and a young Englishman who’s been working out in Brazil on Mrs. Closson’s estancia. The son of an earl, or something. How about that, girls? Two new dancing-partners! And you ain’t any too well off in that line, are you?” This was a burning question, for it was common knowledge that, if their dancing-partners were obscure and few, it was because all the smart and eligible young men of whom Virginia and the Elmsworths read in the “society columns” of the newspapers had deserted Saratoga for Newport.
    â€œMother knows we generally have to dance with each other,” Virginia murmured sulkily.
    â€œYes—or with the beaux from Buffalo!” Nan laughed.
    â€œWell, I call that mortifying; but of course, if your mother disapproves of Mrs. Closson, I guess the young fellows that Closson’s bringing’ll have to dance with the Elmsworth girls instead of you.”
    Mrs. St. George stood trembling beside the dressing-table. Virginia had put down the box, and the diamonds sparkled in a sunset ray that came through the slats of the shutters.
    Mrs. St. George did not own many jewels, but it suddenly occurred to her that each one marked the date of a similar episode. Either a woman, or a business deal—something she had to be indulgent about. She liked trinkets as well as any woman, but at that moment she wished that all of hers were at the bottom of the sea. For each time she had yielded—as she knew she was going to yield now. And her husband would always think that it was because he had bribed her....
    Â 
 
The readjustment of seats necessary to bring together the St. George and Closson parties at the long hotel supper-table caused a flutter in the room. Mrs. St. George was too conscious of it not to avoid Mrs. Elmsworth’s glance of surprise; but she could not deafen herself to Mrs. Elmsworth’s laugh. She had always thought the woman had an underbred laugh. And to think that, so few seasons ago, she had held her chin high in