What do they care what
you've got on? They want to meet you, not your clothes."
She saw that he was in no mood to be trifled with; so she delayed
only long enough to fling into a small trunk a few of her best duds.
She remembered with sudden joy that Ferriday had made her a gift of
one or two of the gowns Lady Powell-Carewe had designed for her
camera-appearances, and she took them along for her debut into the
topmost world. Jim arranged by telephone for the transportation of
her luggage, and they set out on their new and hazardous journey.
Kedzie bade her mother and father a farewell implying a beautiful
distress at parting. She thought it looked well, and she felt that
she owed to her mother her present splendor. She was horribly afraid,
too, of the ordeal ahead of her. She was, indeed, approaching one
of the most terrifying of duels: the first meeting of a mother and
a wife.
Kedzie was not half so afraid as the elder Dyckmans were; for she
had her youth and her beauty, and they were only a plain, fat old
rich couple whose last remaining son had been stolen from them by
a stranger who might take him from them altogether or fling him back
at their feet with a ruined heart.
In her moving pictures Kedzie had played the millionairess many
a time, had driven up in state to mansions, and been admitted by
moving-picture butlers with frozen faces and only three or four
working joints. She had played the millionairess in boudoir and
banquet-hall; she had been loved by nice princes and had foiled
wicked barons.
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