Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 16

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Well, she was back now, in Beverly Hills, and she had just learned from Mims Newman that Erskine de Lacey had gone, of all places, to Jericho!

Jericho ... and Mrs. Simon Bolivar Butford. Mary Agnes knew Mrs. Butford quite well—aged and rich, the town’s chief dowager, to whom everyone kowtowed because it was hoped she would someday leave her money to one or another of Jericho’s civic institutions. She knew Mrs. Butford’s selfishness, and shallowness, and smugness, and greed for flattery and praise. And also she knew how impregnable Mrs. Butford was in her huge old house with her huge old fortune to maintain it and her.

Erskine would know very well how to handle her. He had a way with old women. For years he had taken care of his mother as if he were a nursemaid prior to her death. Madame de Lacey was a widow, suffering from palsy, with one side of her mouth drooped down, talking in a low sepulchral voice. She handled the purse strings, and he handled her.

He was foot-loose. He had never married, and Mary Agnes knew now why he would shrink from marrying a normal woman.

But he knew every trick of dealing with an old woman, and he no doubt turned this to advantage with Mrs. Butford, dancing attendance on her, playing unceasingly to her enormous vanity, never venturing to disagree with her on any subject, coddling her, performing services for her, making himself indispensable to her.

And now he had gone to Jericho with her.

That was what caused Mary Agnes abruptly to change her plans in the middle of her conversation with Mims Newman. She had half intended to accept the invitation to cocktails, and fully intended to go to Balboa with the Kerstings, until Mims dropped that word about Erskine.

Instead she canceled all her engagements, sent a wire to Wistart, and that evening boarded a plane for Jericho.