Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/44

 There was nothing, Julia replied with a sharp, compressed smile. "Nothing at all, save a flirtation. Lily, you know, is very pretty."

"So beautiful!" remarked Mrs. Harrison. "I was telling my son William so, only to-night. He admires her . . . deeply, you know, deeply." She had taken to fanning herself vigorously for the night was hot. She did it boldly, endeavoring in vain to force some stray zephyr among the rolls of fat inside her tight bodice.

"What I can never understand," continued Miss Abercrombie, "is why Lily hasn't already married. A girl so pretty and so nice to every one . . . especially older people."

Mrs. Shane became falsely deprecating of Lily's charms. "She is a good girl," she said. "But hardly as charming as all that. The trouble is that she's very fastidious. She isn't easy to suit." In her deprecation there was an assumption of superiority, as though she could well afford to deprecate because no one could possibly take her seriously.

"She's had plenty of chances. . . . I don't doubt that," observed Miss Abercrombie. "I can remember that summer when we were all in Aix together. . . . Do you remember the young Englishman, Julia? The nice one with yellow hair?" She turned to Mrs. Julis Harrison with an air of arrogant pride and intimacy. "He was the second son of a peer, you know, and she could have had him by a turn of her finger."

And the association with the peerage placed for the time being Miss Abercrombie definitely on the side of Julia Shane in the drawing-room skirmish.

"And Harvey Biggs was so devoted to her," she babbled on. "Such a nice boy . . . gone now to the war like so many other brave fellows." Then as though remembering suddenly that William Harrison was not at the war but safe in the library across the hall, she veered quickly. "They say the Spanish atrocities in Cuba are beyond comprehension. I feel that we should spread them as much as possible to rouse the spirit of the people."

"I've thought since," remarked Mrs. Harrison, "that you should have had flags for decorations at the garden party, Julia. With a war on and especially with the Governor here.