第54章

"Primrose is so depressed if the house isn't full.And so the d'Oylys are here,--Nina more Junoesque than ever and really quite like an Amazon in bathing clothes; Enid Ouchterlony, a little bitter, I'm afraid, at not being engaged to any one yet,--men are horribly scared of an intelligent girl and, after all, they don't marry for intelligence, do they?--Harry Oldershaw, Frank Milwood and Courtney Millet, all nice boys, and I almost forgot to add, Joan Gray, that charming girl.My good man is following at her heels like a bob-tailed sheep dog.Poor old dear! He's arrived at that pathetic period of a man's life when almost any really blond girl still in her teens switches him into a second state of adolescence and makes him a most ridiculous object--what the novelists call the 'Forty-nine feeling,' I believe."

Bennett brought the lemonade and hurried away before his memory could be put to a further strain."Tell me about Joan Gray," said Mrs.jekyil, letting out her line."There's probably no truth in it, but I hear that she and Martin have agreed to differ.How quickly these romantic love matches burn themselves out.I always say that a marriage made in Heaven breaks up far sooner than one made on earth.

It has so much farther to fall.Whose fault is it, hers or his?"Mrs.Hosack bent forward and endeavored to lower her voice.She was a kind-hearted woman who delighted to see every one happy and normal."I'm very worried about those two, my dear," she answered.

"There are all sorts of stories afloat,--one to the effect that Martin has gone off with a chorus girl, another that Joan only married him to get away from her grandparents and a third that they quarreled violently on the way home from church and have not been on speaking terms since.I daresay there are many others, but whatever did happen, and something evidently did, Joan is happy enough, and every man in the house is sentimental about her.Look out there, for instance."Mrs.Jekyll followed her glance and saw a girl in bathing clothes sitting on the beach under a red and blue striped umbrella encircled by the outstretched forms of half a dozen men.Beyond, on the fringe of a sea alive with bursting breakers, several girls were bathing alone.

"H'm," said Mrs.Jekyll."I should think that the second story is the true one.A tip-tilted nose, chestnut hair and brown eyes are better to flirt with than marry.Well, I must run away if I'm to be back to lunch.I wish I could stay, but Edmond and his artist may kill my new butler unless I intervene.They are both hotly pro-Ally.

By the way, I hear that Alice Palgrave has gone to the Maine coast with her mother, who is ill again; I wonder where Gilbert is going?""Well, I had a very charming letter from him two days ago, asking me if he could come and stay with us.He loves this house and the beach, and I always cheer him up, he said, and he is very lonely without Alice.Of course I said yes, and he will be here this afternoon."Whereupon, having landed her fish, Mrs.Jekyll rose to go.Gilbert Palgrave and Joan Gray,--there was truth in that story, as she had thought.She had heard of his having been seen everywhere with Joan night after night, and her sister-in-law, who lived opposite to the little house in East Sixty-seventh Street, had seen him leaving in the early hours of the morning more than once.A lucky strike, indeed.Intuition was a wonderful gift.She was highly pleased with herself.

"Good-by, my dear," she said."I will drive over again one day this week and see how you are all getting on in this beautiful corner of the world.My love to Prim, please, and do remember me to the little siren."And away she went, leaving Mrs.Hosack to wonder what was the meaning of her rather curious smile.Only a hidebound prejudice on the part of the Ministries of all the nations has precluded women from the Diplomatic Service.