But now? She certainly did not intend to be a marked exception
to a rule that was apparently very general. If people were going to talk
about her exclusion of Miss Schley, she would certainly not exclude her.
She asked herself why she wished to, and said to herself that Miss
Schley's slyness bored her. But she knew that the real reason of the
secret hostility she felt towards the American was the fact of their
resemblance to each other. Until Miss Schley appeared in London
she--Viola Holme--had been original both in her beauty and in her manner
of presenting it to the world. Miss Schley was turning her into a type.
It was too bad. Any woman would have disliked it.
She wondered whether Miss Schley recognised the likeness. But of course
people had spoken to her about it. Mrs. Wolfstein was her bosom friend.
The Jewess had met her first at Carlsbad and, with that terrible social
flair which often dwells in Israel, had at once realised her fitness for
a London success and resolved to "get her over." Women of the Wolfstein
species are seldom jealously timorous of the triumphs of other women. A
certain coarse cleverness, a certain ingrained assurance and
unconquerable self-confidence keeps them hardy. And they generally have a
noble reliance on the power of the tongue. Being incapable of any fear of
Miss Schley, Mrs. Wolfstein, ever on the look-out for means of improving
her already satisfactory position in the London world, saw one in the
vestal virgin and resolved to launch her in England.
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