Part 44 (1/2)

Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on them once during the week though he had known that they were more or less back in town.

”Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure,” he said. ”I don't know precisely what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes.

I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the engagement in the newspapers.” He added, ”I certainly was in the dark as to that affair.”

”Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?” Miss Wollaston inquired. ”I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface one would have to call her rather worldly, I think.”

”On the surface perhaps,” Wallace interposed, ”but not really; not at heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music.”

”And Mary,” Miss Wollaston observed, ”happens to be the one utterly unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the preparation for his opera however.” Then after a little pause, ”She may prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation, of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a comfort,” she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high steps to her brother's door, ”to talk the matter over quietly with some one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible.”

But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when the church-goers came in.

She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her visitor both hands along with the ”Wallace! How nice!” that welcomed him, and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said, ”Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just answered it.”

Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger.

There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years, anyhow, to remember the like of.

He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her left him for a moment wordless.

”You needn't try to make me a speech,” she said. ”I know you're pleased.

Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ...”

”As pleased as possible, anyhow,” he said. On that, amicably arm in arm, they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room.

”I don't believe we've seen each other,” she said, ”since the night we had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago.”

”No,” he said. ”I remember very well that we haven't.”

Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this fact he went on:

”I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a subst.i.tute. I'm afraid, perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me.”

He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor.

”I was just wondering,” she explained, ”whether if you had come that particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony.”

Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror.

Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner toward the door.

”I think if you will excuse me,” she said, ”I'll go up and prepare for luncheon.”

Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blus.h.i.+ng like a boy caught stealing apples. ”I'm sorry,” she gasped, but not quickly enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. ”It's terrible of me to say things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm a little--wild with it.”

In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on.

”Why, we'll be married, I suppose,” she said, ”at the end of the customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, really.”

”I'm glad of that,” he remarked.

Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand rea.s.suringly.