Free Her Infinite Variety by Louis Auchincloss, Louis S. Auchincloss Page B

nothing," she said at last. "What are you going to do about it?"
    "Isn't it more a question of what
you're
going to do about it?"
    "What can I possibly do? Poor Rory is dead."
    "Well, Mummie said—"
    "Oh, so you've told your mother?"
    "Didn't I have to?" Of course, any Hoyt daughter would. "But nobody else. Really, Clara, nobody else knows."
    "Except all the people your friend Aggie has told."
    Maribel appeared not to have considered this. "Oh, do you suppose she has?" Clara nodded resignedly. "Well, anyway, Mummie wants to know if we can put this all in the past. She telephoned me this morning when she read the news. She hopes that when Trevor comes home things will go back to the way they were before."
    Trevor was in London, having been given shore duty, after three years at sea, as a naval liaison officer at General Eisenhower's headquarters. He was now a lieutenant commander; the assignment, an important one, had been procured by his father.
    "Trevor and I will have to decide that when we meet again. I take it there will be no way of keeping the cleaning lady's glad tidings from his no doubt curious ears."
    "Mummie thinks it's so much better that Mr. O'Connor died a hero's death. It puts a different color on things."
    Clara laughed. She had not thought that she would laugh that day. "How like your mother! She's a great one at cleaning us up. Oh, yes, I see it! If I'd had a walk out with some greasy civilian, some draft dodger or war profiteer, while Trevor was fighting on the briny deep, that would be beyond redemption. Of course! But with my lover dying a hero on the beaches of Normandy while my husband is safe and sound in London and, who knows, perhaps having an affair with a lovely lady of title, that puts a different slant on things, doesn't it?"
    "Clara, do you know I'm sometimes actually afraid of you? You react so differently from the way other people do."
    "Well, spades are spades, my dear, no matter what we call them. And I am certainly not going to call them anything else. Whatever I've done, I'll live with!"
    "Do you think Trevor
is
having an affair with a lady of title?"
    "Let's hope for the title, anyway. But no, Maribel, I have no reason to suspect any such thing, except that he's a very attractive man who's been away from the sex for a long time. How's Bert doing?"
    Bert Harper was a naval intelligence officer stationed in the Canal Zone. Maribel's features immediately darkened.
    "You may well ask," she muttered.

6
    T REVOR HOYT in London learned of his wife's affair from a letter of his mother's. Mrs. Hoyt was reserved in her statement; she confined herself to the facts and for once offered no judgment.

    "Your father and I decided there was too much danger of your hearing about it from others, and it was better that you should have it straight from us. That the sorry business is over is the one good thing about the wretched O'Connor's death. Maribel is of the opinion that there's no present danger of Clara's taking up with anybody else. O'Connor, after all, was not some casual acquaintance picked up at a cocktail party; we know, of course, that he and Clara had been good friends before the war. I think, dear son, that we've all been living through very trying times, and some of us may have tumbled into strange experiences and relationships that would never have been our lot before. If you can find it in your heart to forgive this folly in your up-to-now admirable spouse, you and she may yet find happiness in the peace that seems at last to be on its way."
    Trevor read the letter in his office and rose immediately to quit the building and walk briskly several times around Grosvenor Square. His seemingly cool stride belied the wrath that seethed within him. But on his third circumnavigation of the park his anger began to be qualified by an almost querulous indignation. How
could
she? How could she do this to him just
now
, when everything had been going just right in his life, when the Allied armies