Billy opened her lips, but she shut them without speaking. After a minute she opened them again.
"You might consult--Cyril--about that," she said in a quiet voice.
"Yes, I will," nodded Mrs. Hartwell, brightly. She was looking pleased and happy again. "I love weddings. Don"t you? You can _do_ so much with them!"
"Can you?" laughed Billy, irrepressibly.
"Yes. Cyril is happy, of course. Still, I can"t imagine _him_ in love with any woman."
"I think Marie can."
"I suppose so. I don"t seem to remember her much; still, I think I saw her once or twice when I was on last June. Music teacher, wasn"t she?"
"Yes. She is a very sweet girl."
"Hm-m; I suppose so. Still, I think "twould have been better if Cyril could have selected some one that _wasn"t_ musical--say a more domestic wife. He"s so terribly unpractical himself about household matters."
Billy gave a ringing laugh and stood up. The car had come to a stop before her own door.
"Do you? Just you wait till you see Marie"s trousseau of--egg-beaters and cake tins," she chuckled.
Mrs. Hartwell looked blank.
"Whatever in the world do you mean, Billy?" she demanded fretfully, as she followed her hostess from the car. "I declare! aren"t you ever going to grow beyond making those absurd remarks of yours?"
"Maybe--sometime," laughed Billy, as she took little Kate"s hand and led the way up the steps.
Luncheon in the cozy dining-room at Hillside that day was not entirely a success. At least there were not present exactly the harmony and tranquillity that are conceded to be the best sauce for one"s food. The wedding, of course, was the all-absorbing topic of conversation; and Billy, between Aunt Hannah"s attempts to be polite, Marie"s to be sweet-tempered, Mrs. Hartwell"s to be dictatorial, and her own to be pacifying as well as firm, had a hard time of it. If it had not been for two or three diversions created by little Kate, the meal would have been, indeed, a dismal failure.
But little Kate--most of the time the personification of proper little-girlhood--had a disconcerting faculty of occasionally dropping a word here, or a question there, with startling effect. As, for instance, when she asked Billy "Who"s going to boss your wedding?" and again when she calmly informed her mother that when _she_ was married she was not going to have any wedding at all to bother with, anyhow. She was going to elope, and she should choose somebody"s chauffeur, because he"d know how to go the farthest and fastest so her mother couldn"t catch up with her and tell her how she ought to have done it.
After luncheon Aunt Hannah went up-stairs for rest and recuperation.
Marie took little Kate and went for a brisk walk--for the same purpose.
This left Billy alone with her guest.
"Perhaps you would like a nap, too, Mrs. Hartwell," suggested Billy, as they pa.s.sed into the living-room. There was a curious note of almost hopefulness in her voice.
Mrs. Hartwell scorned naps, and she said so very emphatically. She said something else, too.
"Billy, why do you always call me "Mrs. Hartwell" in that stiff, formal fashion? You used to call me "Aunt Kate.""
"But I was very young then." Billy"s voice was troubled. Billy had been trying so hard for the last two hours to be the graciously cordial hostess to this woman--Bertram"s sister.
"Very true. Then why not "Kate" now?"
Billy hesitated. She was wondering why it seemed so hard to call Mrs.
Hartwell "Kate."
"Of course," resumed the lady, "when you"re Bertram"s wife and my sister--"
"Why, of course," cried Billy, in a sudden flood of understanding.
Curiously enough, she had never before thought of Mrs. Hartwell as _her_ sister. "I shall be glad to call you "Kate"--if you like."
"Thank you. I shall like it very much, Billy," nodded the other cordially. "Indeed, my dear, I"m very fond of you, and I was delighted to hear you were to be my sister. If only--it could have stayed William instead of Bertram."
"But it couldn"t," smiled Billy. "It wasn"t William--that I loved."
"But _Bertram!_--it"s so absurd."
"Absurd!" The smile was gone now.
"Yes. Forgive me, Billy, but I was about as much surprised to hear of Bertram"s engagement as I was of Cyril"s."
Billy grew a little white.
"But Bertram was never an avowed--woman-hater, like Cyril, was he?"
""Woman-hater"--dear me, no! He was a woman-lover, always. As if his eternal "Face of a Girl" didn"t prove that! Bertram has always loved women--to paint. But as for his ever taking them seriously--why, Billy, what"s the matter?"
Billy had risen suddenly.
"If you"ll excuse me, please, just a few minutes," Billy said very quietly. "I want to speak to Rosa in the kitchen. I"ll be back--soon."
In the kitchen Billy spoke to Rosa--she wondered afterwards what she said. Certainly she did not stay in the kitchen long enough to say much.
In her own room a minute later, with the door fast closed, she took from her table the photograph of Bertram and held it in her two hands, talking to it softly, but a little wildly.
"I didn"t listen! I didn"t stay! Do you hear? I came to you. She shall not say anything that will make trouble between you and me. I"ve suffered enough through her already! And she doesn"t _know_--she didn"t know before, and she doesn"t now. She"s only imagining. I will not not--_not_ believe that you love me--just to paint. No matter what they say--all of them! I _will not!_"
Billy put the photograph back on the table then, and went down-stairs to her guest. She smiled brightly, though her face was a little pale.
"I wondered if perhaps you wouldn"t like some music," she said pleasantly, going straight to the piano.
"Indeed I would!" agreed Mrs. Hartwell.
Billy sat down then and played--played as Mrs. Hartwell had never heard her play before.
"Why, Billy, you amaze me," she cried, when the pianist stopped and whirled about. "I had no idea you could play like that!"
Billy smiled enigmatically. Billy was thinking that Mrs. Hartwell would, indeed, have been surprised if she had known that in that playing were herself, the ride home, the luncheon, Bertram, and the girl--whom Bertram _did not love only to paint!_
CHAPTER XIII. CYRIL AND A WEDDING
The twelfth was a beautiful day. Clear, frosty air set the blood to tingling and the eyes to sparkling, even if it were not your wedding day; while if it were--