Jack had made an effort to cultivate the dignified Argentinian upon the occasions of his visits by the only means he knew—lavish entertainment.
Lucy Hodge, a clever woman of no particular family but, at the time she first married Jack and was not so sure of him, of an alert ambition, was wiser. She perceived the possibilities in the business connection between the wealthy de Cordoba and her husband's firm and the importance of retaining the Spaniard's friendship. She played up to him skillfully, and she was a very good actress. Don Caesar admired her good looks, her carefully modulated manners, her clothes, and the slow, lazy, almost Spanish grace of her.
Lucy had been largely responsible for his decision, when Carmelita was fifteen years old, to send his daughter to an American convent to be educated. This, to Don Caesar's mind, would serve two purposes. It would enable the girl to receive the advantage of an American education, and he was a great admirer of education in general and the American educational system in particular. And it would, to put it plainly, rid him of the necessity of exercising a personal vigilance over Carmelita's welfare for a while.
So Carmelita, a dark, slender girl with the awkward grace of fifteen, her large black pools
