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However, Portlaw was able to enlighten her if he cared to. Again and again Hamil, wandering in circles, looked across the wilderness of women's hats at Shiela Cardross, but a dozen men surrounded her, and among them he noticed the graceful figure of Malcourt directly in front of her, blocking any signal he might have given. Somebody was saying something about Mrs. Ascott.
The aged negro rose, hat doffed, juicy traces of forbidden sapodillas on his face which he naïvely removed with the back of the blackest and most grotesquely wrinkled hand Hamil had ever seen. "Yaas-suh; 'scusin' de 'gator, wile-cat love de mud-fish mostest; yaas, suh. Ole torm-cat he fish de crick lak he was no 'count Seminole trash "
After dinner Portlaw settled down by the fire, cigar lighted, and began to compose a letter to Malcourt, embodying his vivid ideas concerning a new house near his own for the bridal pair. Hamil went out into the fresh April night. The young grass was wet under the stars; a delicate fragrance of new buds filled the air.
It would be devilishly unpleasant for me if I lost him.... And I'm always afraid of it.... There are usually a lot of receptive girls making large eyes at him.... My only safety is that they are so many and so easy.... If Cardross hadn't signed that telegram I'd bet my bottes-sauvage it concerned some entanglement." Hamil lay back in his chair and studied the forest through the leaded casement.
When Hamil left his table he halted to ask an imposing head-waiter whether Miss Palliser might be expected to breakfast, and was informed that she breakfasted and lunched in her rooms and dined always in the café. So he stopped at the desk and sent up his card.
Hamil and Malcourt descended; a groom blanketed the horses and took them to the stables; and Portlaw, with a large gesture of impatient hospitality, led the way into a great, warm living-room, snug, deeply and softly padded, and in which the fragrance of burning birch-logs and simmering toddy blended agreeably in the sunshine.
"Then I think that she will return to you the exact measure of friendship that you offer her.... Because, Mr. Hamil, she is after all not very old in years, and a little sensitive and impressionable." He thought to himself: "She is a rather curious mixture of impulse and reason; of shyness and audacity; of composure and timidity; of courage and cowardice and experience.
Cardross is in the orange grove, I see." And, smiling, passed the guilty ones with a humorously threatening shake of his head. A black boy, grinning, opened the gate; the quick-stepping figure in white flannels glanced around at the click of the latch. "Hamil! Good work! I am glad to see you!" his firm, sun-burnt hands closing over Hamil's "glad all through!" "Not as glad as I am, Mr. Cardross "
At least, I couldn't do that! Kill for pleasure! as better men than I do. And better women, too!... What am I talking about? I've done worse than that on impulse meaning well, like other fools." Malcourt's face had become drawn, sallow, almost sneering; but in the slow gaze he turned on Hamil was that blank hopelessness which no man can encounter and remember unmoved.
Never mind; just hand me a cigarette and take away the tray. It's a case of being a very naughty boy, Hamil. How are you anyway, and what did you shoot?" Hamil greeted him briefly, but did not seem inclined to enter or converse. Malcourt yawned, glanced at the grape-fruit, then affably at Hamil. "I say," he began, "hope you'll overlook my rotten behaviour last time we met.
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