Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/427

391 of sitting behind closed doors and gossiping. You have done it thirteen times in three months. Don't be such pigs; scandal, like other pleasures, was meant to be shared."

At a gesture of invitation he seated himself beside her and lifted the Persian pussy to his lap.

"Well," she inquired, "are you really going with us?"

"I can't go when you do, but I'm going to The Breakers for a week or two—solely to keep an eye on your behavior."

"That is jolly!" she said, flushing with pleasure. "Was father pleased when you told him?"

"He didn't say he was pleased."

"He is always reticent," she said, quickly. "But won't it be too jolly for words! We'll travel miles and miles together in bicycle-chairs, and we'll yacht and bathe and ride and golf, and catch amber-jack and sharks, and—you'll persuade father to let me copper just once at the club—won't you?"

"Copper? Indeed! Not much! Where did you hear that sort of talk, Catharine?"

"Don't tweak Omar's tail and I'll tell you,—there! you've done it again, and I won't tell you."

He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired that trick of suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose. What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles removed from her. Where were his thoughts?

Touched in her amour propre, she quietly resumed the map of southern Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his self-centred and provoking meditation.

She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally watched him.

Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new light, impersonally for the moment. So far away from her had he apparently drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were observing a stranger—a most interesting and most attractive young man.

He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

Eighteen, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing like a schoolgirl!

There was no constraint; her self-possession cooled her cheeks;—and he was not looking at her, after all: he was looking through her, at something his fancy focussed far, far beyond her.

Never had she thought any man half as attractive as this old friend in a new light—this handsome, well-built, careless young fellow absorbed in thoughts which excluded her. No doubt he was so habituated to herself in all her moods that nothing except the friendliest indifference could ever—

To her consternation another tint of warm color slowly spread over neck and cheek. He rose at the same moment, dropped the cat back among the cushions, and smiling down at her, held out his hand. She took it, met his eyes with an effort; but what message she divined in them Heaven alone knows, for all at once her heart stood still and a strange thrill left her fingers nerveless in his hand.

He was saying, slowly, "Then I shall see you at Palm Beach next week?"

"Yes You will come, won't you?"

"Yes, I will come."

"But if you—change your mind?"

"I never change. Good night."

"Good night You may write me if you wish."

"I will write, every day—if you don't mind."

"No—I don't mind," she said, faintly.

She withdrew her hand and stood perfectly still as he left the room. She heard a servant open the door, she heard Harroll's quick step echo on the stoop, then the door closed.

A second later Mr. Delancy in the library was aroused from complacent meditation by the swish of a silken skirt, and glancing up, beheld a tall, prettily formed girl looking at him with a sober and rather colorless face.

"Father," she said, "I'm in love with Jim Harroll, and I've just found it out!"

Mr. Delancy groped for his monocle,