Part 57 (2/2)
”He's beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. ”He's not stupid, at all events.”
”I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing,” Amabel Grantham decided. ”I should like to ask you a question.”
”Ask it, by all means,” said Gwynedd.
”Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?”
”Never,” was Gwynedd's answer. ”The young man from Troy used to do it, and then beg pardon and turn red.”
”I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's story,” Amabel Grantham argued. ”Lucy and I are quite out of the running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as he does of any of you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,' which is pure New York of the first water.”
”He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only t.i.tles, but looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest, Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably suggested.
”Ladies first,” commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to being supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a ”looker.”
”There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward somewhat thoughtfully. ”Captain Palliser insists that he is much shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all over before he commits himself.”
”He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness.
”He's rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think him over.”
”I told you she was tremendously taken with him,” said her sister.
”It's come to this.”
”But,” said Lady Gwynedd, ”he is not going to commit himself to any of us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn't object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn't annoyed; he's only curious.”
”He's been adored by salesladies in New York,” said Honora, ”and he can't understand it.”
”He's been liked,” Amabel Grantham summed him up. ”He's a likable thing. He's even rather a dear. I've begun to like him myself.”
”I hear you are learning to play croquet,” the Duke of Stone remarked to him a day or so later. ”How do you like it?”
”Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,” Tembarom answered. ”I'd learn to iron s.h.i.+rt-waists if she would give me lessons. She's one of the two that have dimples,” he added, reflection in his tone. ”I guess that'll count. Shouldn't you think it would?”
”Miss Hutchinson?” queried the duke.
Tembarom nodded.
”Yes, it's always her,” he answered without a ray of humor. ”I just want to stack 'em up.”
”You are doing it,” the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. ”I must, however, call your attention to the fact that there is sometimes in your manner a hint of a businesslike pursuit of a fixed object which you must beware of. The Lady Gwynedds might not enjoy the situation if they began to suspect. If they decided to flout you,--'to throw you down,' I ought to say--where would little Miss Hutchinson be?”
Tembarom looked startled and disturbed.
”Say,” he exclaimed, ”do I ever look that way? I must do better than that. Anyhow, it ain't all put on. I'm doing my stunt, of course, but I like them. They're mighty nice to me when you consider what they're up against. And those two with the dimples,--Lady Gwynned and Lady Honora, are just peaches. Any fellow might”--he stopped and looked serious again--”That's why they'd count,” he added.
They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling themselves down to enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
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