And the best of all
this was that while it was said that Henderson was one of the boldest and
shrewdest of operators, and a man to be feared in the Street, he was in
his family relations one of the most generous and kind-hearted of men.
Henderson himself had not much time for the frivolities of the season,
and he evaded all but the more conspicuous social occasions, at which
Carmen, sometimes with a little temper, insisted that he should accompany
her. "You would come here," he once said, "when you knew I was immersed
in most perplexing business."
"And now I am here," she had replied, in a tone equally wanting in
softness, "you have got to make the best of me."
Was Jack happy in the whirl he was in? Some days exceedingly so. Some
days he sulked, and some days he threw himself with recklessness born of
artificial stimulants into the always gay and rattling moods of Miss
Tavish. Somehow he could get no nearer to Henderson or to Mavick than
when he was in New York. Not that he could accuse Mavick of trying to
conceal anything; Mavick bore to him always the open, "all right"
attitude, but there were things that he did not understand.
And then Carmen? Was she a little less dependent on him, in this wide
horizon, than in New York? And had he noticed a little disposition to
patronize on two or three occasions? It was absurd.
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