Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/198

 him," she said, quickly, under her voice. "What is it? What has happened?"

I was as much taken aback as if a marble Venus had suddenly turned its sculptured head to me and spoken breathlessly. It was Con Gorman of whom she was speaking. I could believe that Con might have stood outside the railing and gazed up reverently at the placid face of the goddess, but I could not believe that the Olympian eyes had ever been lowered to look at him. She held her head high while she asked me about him. She was of that statuesque type of gray-eyed English beauty of which Du Maurier loved to make architectural drawings.

I repeated what I had said to Con. It did not seem adequate to her. "But he was so excited," she murmured. We were making our way across the semi-baronial hall of the Country Club, in the general direction of the fruit punch. And suddenly she deflected me toward the side veranda. "It's so hot," she said, hurriedly. "I feel almost faint."

I understood that she had seen Con—as I had—coming to intercept us. She escorted me rapidly outdoors, and down the deserted porch to the back steps and out across the lawn toward the tennis-courts. "I want to speak to him," she said, "alone"; and she stopped me with a hand on my arm and went on into the darkness without me.