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I like Carnaby as he is!" The young man had seated himself beside his hostess in an attitude of perfect ease. Though bored by his present environment, he was entirely at home in it. Just because he greatly dared towards her and was never afraid, Mrs. de Tracy liked him. With the mere flicker of an eyelid, she dismissed the attendant Smeardon.
It's hardly begun, and I fear the lady in question will arouse attention whatever she wears." "Would she be called attractive?" asked Mrs. de Tracy with surprise. "Oh, yes, without a doubt!" "In gentlemen's eyes, I suppose you mean?" said Miss Smeardon. "Yes, in gentlemen's eyes," answered Lavendar, firmly. "Those of women are apparently furnished with different lenses.
Fortunately Mrs. de Tracy did not like to be alone, so that wherever she went Miss Smeardon had to go too, and there happened to be a sale of work at a neighbouring vicarage that afternoon where she considered her presence a necessity. Robinette had vanished soon after luncheon and the middy had been dull, so after loitering around for a while, he too had disappeared upon some errand of his own.
Loring too; he's quite off his head about her if she only knew it. However, it's my last day very likely, and if I have to outwit Machiavelli I'll manage it somehow! Surely one lame old woman, and a torpid machine for knitting and writing notes like Miss Smeardon, can't want to be out of doors all day. Hang that boy, though! He'll come anywhere."
In fruit or vegetables, for instance, it generally means coarseness and indifferent flavour." Miss Smeardon beamed at this palpable hit, but Mrs. Loring deprived the situation of its point by backing up Mrs. de Tracy heartily. She had no opinion of mere size, either, she declared. "You don't stand up for your country half enough," objected Carnaby to his cousin.
He had contrived to get hold of the Marie Antoinette pearls without his grandmother's knowledge and to hang them around his neck; he had poised the Montmorency tiara on his own sleek head; he had forced a heavy bracelet by way of collar round Rupert's throat, and now with that choking and goggling unfortunate held partner-wise in his arms, he was waltzing on tiptoe about the farther drawing room behind the unconscious backs of Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon.
Miss Smeardon was to be her companion, as Mrs. de Tracy had a headache that afternoon and was afraid of the heat, she said. "What heat?" Robinette had asked innocently, for in spite of the brilliant sunlight the wind blew from the east, keen as a knife. "I shall take a good wrap in the carriage in spite of this tropical temperature," she thought.
"I wonder if one woman staying in a house full of men would find life as depressing as I do cooped up here under precisely opposite circumstances," he thought, as he made his way through the little churchyard. "It cannot be the atmosphere of femininity that bores me, however, for Mrs. de Tracy has a strongly masculine flavour and Miss Smeardon is as nearly neuter as a person can be."
The two young people set off in high spirits, and Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon watched them as they walked down the avenue on their way to the station, their clasped hands swinging in a merry rhythm as they hummed a bit of the last popular song. "I hope Robinetta will not Americanize Carnaby," said Mrs. de Tracy. "He seems so foolishly elated, so feverishly gay all at once.
"It was a foolish engagement, Miss Smeardon," said Mrs. de Tracy in a cold voice. "I never thought the girl was suited to Mark, and I understand that old Mr. Lavendar was relieved when the whole thing came to an end."
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