The Embezzler by Louis Auchincloss Page A

each other. Rex said nothing. Stride, the old butler, who acted on the twitch of my eyelid, filled and refilled my glass with champagne. It was very hot, and through the wide-open French windows came, every few minutes, the roar of one of Angelica's black angus bulls which grazed in the pasture abutting the front lawn.
    I understand that Meadowview has been condemned and a turnpike put through it, so I will say here, for the benefit of such of my grandsons who may not remember it, that it was indeed a dream place and all Angelica's dream. Left to myself, I would probably, like my uncles, have put up a French chateau or an Italian palazzo. But Angelica had built a poem, a long, rambling, two-storied, amber-brick manor house that was at its most beautiful as then, in an early spring dusk, with candelabra flickering in the high-ceilinged dining room and the scent of roses and geraniums in the air.
    I lifted my glass to Evadne. "Every sip tonight is a toast for you and George, sweetheart."
    "Then our health should be horselike," she responded calmly, her large gray eyes taking in my again empty glass.
    "Have you fixed a wedding day?"
    She glanced at George. "We thought November."
    "But that's six months off!"
    I always found Evadne very beautiful, though she was generally considered merely pretty. She had the pale oval face and rich blond hair of so many of the Prime women. At this time she looked somewhat as my cousin Alix had looked at her age, except that Evadne had more character. Her silences were the silences of a contented rather than a nervous woman. She had always been a perfect daughter: affectionate, neat, industrious, good tempered. She had extraordinary equanimity, almost at times placidity. But I suspected that she was more deeply in love with George than she cared to show, and her reserve irritated me. I quite concede that demonstrative affection would have irritated me just as much. I was as inconsistent as any fond father. Evadne was a one-man dog, but I suspected that she could change her attachment, like a poodle, from one owner to another. She was all George's now, and it bothered me that she was cool enough to pretend to the contrary.
    "If George finds somebody else in that long cold wait," I pointed out, "you'll have only yourself to thank."
    "I'll have myself to thank for finding out he's not the man for me. Before it's too late."
    "That sounds so calculating."
    Evadne gave a faint shrug. "I've noticed something about parents, Pa. They're always complaining that children have no common sense, but they hate it when we do."
    "May I say that you seem particularly Prime today, my dear?"
    "Where did I get it from, old sweet?"
    "Don't worry about me, Mr. Prime," George put in. "I could wait seven years for my Rachel."
    "But who would be Leah in the meantime?" Angelica demanded suddenly from her end of the table, and there was perfunctory laughter. It was the only laughter that I can recall that night.
    Angelica was wearing the loose-flowing black velvet robe that she kept for family evenings. Except for nights when we went out together, which were rare now, she hardly needed other clothes, for she was in riding habit all day. Her brown, wrinkled skin and crinkly, glinting smile, her thin braceleted arms, her rough voice and raucous laugh, all cried her independence from the world—and from me. Fox hunting was her only passion now, and she was known in Nassau County for her daring jumps and persistence to the kill. So also, and less fortunately, was she known for her extravagance, of purse and of tongue, for her barbed wit, for her ability to drink like a man, for her fondness for younger company, particularly male. Yet Angelica's flirtations had only once been more than that. There was a curious discipline to her riot, a heritage of the Hydes.
    She brought up a topic now, in all innocence, that had a grisly relevance to my situation: the failure and suicide of Count Landi. He had been one of those weird