success when you have millions, and soon enough
you'll have more money than you know what to do
with."
Bart's dark head bowed. "I don't feel successful.
Not when no one will even come to my party." His
voice cracked as he turned his back.
I got up to go to him. "Will you dance with me,
Bart?" "No!" he snapped, hurrying to a distant window
where he could stand and stare again.
Cindy had a wonderful time with the musicians
and the men and women who'd come to serve Bart's
guests. However, I was deeply downcast, feeling sorry
for Bart, who had counted so much on this. Out of
sympathy for him, all of us but Cindy and the hired
help moved into the front parlor, and there we sat in
our fabulous expensive clothes and waited for guests
who obviously had accepted, only to trick Bart later
on--and in this way tell us what they thought of the
Foxworths on the hill.
The grandfather clock began to toll the hour of
twelve. Bart left the windows and fell upon the sofa
before the guttering log fire. "I should have known it
would turn out this way." He glanced bitterly at Jory.
"Perhaps they came to my birthday party only to see
you dance, and now, when you can't--to hell with
me! They've snubbed me--and they're going to pay
for it," he said in a hard, cold voice, louder and
stronger than Joel's but with the same kind of zealot's
fury. "Before I'm through, there won't be a house in a
twenty-mile radius that doesn't belong to me. I'll ruin