“Stop whining. Go to bed where you belong!” Eloise said, and slammed the door. She was still scowling over the incident as she hurried back to the stairs, and then as she descended them hurriedly, her face seemed to transform, and the memory of Gabriella and what she had done to her seemed to vanish entirely as she reached the hallway. Three of her guests were standing there, putting on their coats, and she kissed each of them warmly as they left, and then returned to the drawing room to chat and dance with the others. It was as though Gabriella had never existed. And to her, she didn't. Gabriella meant nothing to her.
Marianne Marks said to give Gabriella her love as she made her exit. “I promised to go up and visit her before I left, but she must be asleep by now,” she said with regret as the child's mother frowned and looked startled.
“I should hope so!” she said sternly. “Did you see her tonight?” she asked Marianne, almost vaguely, seeming surprised but not particularly concerned about it.
“I did,” the pretty woman confessed sheepishly, forgetting what Gabriella had said about not being allowed to see the guests, and not giving it much importance. Who could get angry at an angel like Gabriella? But there were far too many things Marianne did not know about the child's mother. “She's so adorable. She was sitting at the top of the stairs when we arrived, in the sweetest little pink nightgown. I ran upstairs to give her a kiss, and we chatted for a few minutes.”
“I'm sorry,” Eloise said, looking mildly annoyed. “She shouldn't have done that.” She said it apologetically, as though Gabriella had done something appalling to offend them, and in Eloise's eyes she had. She had made her presence known, which was an unpardonable sin to her mother, but Marianne Marks couldn't have known that.
“It was my fault. I'm afraid I couldn't resist her, with those huge eyes. She wanted to see my tiara.”
“I hope you didn't let her touch it.” Something in Eloise's eyes told Marianne not to say more, and as they left the Harrison house that night, Marianne said something about it to Robert.
“She's awfully hard on that child, don't you think, Bob? She acted as though she would have stolen my tiara, if I'd let her.”
“She may just be very old-fashioned about children, she was probably afraid Gabriella had annoyed you.”
“How could she annoy me?” Marianne said innocently as they drove home behind their chauffeur. “She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen… so serious, and so pretty. She has the saddest eyes…” And then, wistfully, “I wish we had a little girl like her.”
“I know,” he said, patting her hand, and glancing away from the disappointment in his wife's eyes. He knew what it meant to her that in nine years of marriage they had never been able to have children. But it was something they both had to accept now.
“She's hard on John too,” Marianne volunteered after a few moments of silence, thinking of the children they would never have, and the pretty little girl she had talked to that evening.
“Who?” Robert's mind was on other things by then. He'd had a busy day at the office, and was already thinking ahead to the next one. He had dismissed the Harrisons from his mind, and his wife's comments about their daughter.
“Eloise.” Marianne brought him back to the evening at hand, and he nodded. “John danced with that English girl Prince Orlovsky brought several times, and I thought Eloise looked as though she were about to kill him.”
Robert Marks smiled at his wife's assessment of the situation. “And I suppose you would have been fine if I'd danced with her?” He raised an eyebrow, and his wife laughed at him. “The woman scarcely had any clothes on.” She'd been wearing a flesh-colored satin gown that clung to her like skin, and left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She'd been quite spectacular and John Harrison had clearly found her very entertaining. Who hadn't?
“I suppose I can't blame Eloise,” Marianne admitted sheepishly. And then, seemingly without guile, as she turned her big blue eyes innocently to her husband, “Did you think she was pretty?”
But he knew better than to answer, as he laughed heartily, just as they reached their house on East Seventy-ninth Street. “I'm not going to fall for that one, Miss Marianne!