CHAPTER
II
Tuer Fentriss house stood high on a knoll overlooking the Country Club which constituted Dorrisdale’s chief attraction as a suburb. Mona Fentriss had built it with a legacy of $25,000 left to her just before Patricia’s birth, and Ralph had put in the $15,000 necessary to complete the work after the architect’s original estimate had been exhausted, leaving the place still unfinished by one wing, all the decorations, and most of the plumbing. The extra cost was due largely to the constantly altering schemes of Mona. She wished her house “just so,” and just so she finally had it from the little conservatory off the side hallway to the comfortable servants’ suite on the third floor.
If the result was,
architecturally,
a plate of hash, as Ralph called it, nevertheless the house was particularly easy to live in. To Mona Fentriss belonged the credit for this. What she had of conscience was enlisted in her domestic economy. As Ralph Fentriss’s wife she might be casually unfaithful. As mistress of his household she was impeccable. The effortless seductiveness of her personality established its special atmosphere throughout the place. It made the servants her devoted and unwearying aids, and broadly speaking, a household is much what the servants make it. People gravitate naturally to a well-run place. Life seems so suave and easy there. Guests of all ages came and went at Holiday Knoll, mostly men. Mona cared little for women, and her own strong magnetism for men had been inherited by her two grown daughters. 18
