Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1919)

3TI0N piCTURF MAGAZINE. Ll Annie saw Mrs. Jeffries ward, saw the elder . lean f orher face firm as living marble, hair ... he thought of a woman . . . real. A mate. A comrade. Steel-true. Bladestraight. A woman ... to love . . . She went home that night and she didn't read. She sat on the edge of her bed and her firm mouth was curled in the softest of little smiles. She was thinking of his blue eyes . . . wide awake blue eyes ... of the little ruffly gold of his hair . . . her lips moved and her quiet hands sought her breast . . . A week later they were married. "It's just got to be !" Howard, Jr., stormed at her, face very flushed and earnest, "dont you know it . . . dont you?" "Yes," Annie had said quietly; "yes, I know. I know — of course." "My father will probably spill about a bit," warned Howard; "he likes to sort of chart things out for me, the old boy does. The habit grew up with him He moved me about with the most beautiful ease and confidence. He generally made pretty snappy moves, so I never bucked him. But this — this. Well, you see, Annie, this is the very first thing that has ever mattered to me, so of course dad can have nothing to say ..." "I am afraid," Annie had murmured. "Afraid! Not of me, darling?" drain of blood "No> sillY N0, for you. Your father . . . he's a swell, you see. He'll . . . he'll hate me and all I stand for. My dad ... he wasn't a swell, Howard dear. He was a pretty awful person. Mother was tired out, that's all there ever was to mother. I dont even know what she might have been, given a chance." Howard checked her. "I'm not marrying your mother nor your father," he told her, "and dad's not doing any marrying of the family at all. He pleased himself and nothing said about it, so I guess I'll do the same. We'll go to see him tomorrow." Howard Jeffries, Sr., was the type of a person to whom background mattered enormously. He had outgrown a great many weeds and cankers in the course of his struggle upward, but he had never outgrown the snobbery he had started with. A person simply must have a background. Individuals were not enough. He had planned an elaborate background for his brought-up-by-hand and always amenable son. There was Faire Delafield. Faire Delafield had a great many catalogable qualifications for a potential Mrs. Jeffries, Jr. Chief among these was a father whose interests would merge with and considerably augment the holdings and the prestige of the Jeffries interests. It would be a most advantageous affair. It was as good as settled. The girl was rather anemiclooking and she did titter abominably, but then, Howard, Jr., would never lack for outside amusement {Continued on page 84) "I didn't count," she said, long afterward, "so much as she did in the scheme of things" 9s8 l.A££