From under her pongee parasol she looked longingly up the road and down for her horses, but for a while no horses came. At last a carriage looking like her own did come down the lake road and she hoped for a moment. Then as the carriage drove rapidly past her face fell.
The great gentleman indicated his annoyance at the insolent mud that spattered from the carriage wheel by a look, but he kept quite near to the fine lady and his eyes fell very kindly on her pink cheeks. Her carriage did not come even after they had gone to his car and seated themselves in the tonneau to await it. He was too clever to hurry her.
He allowed her to wait until she saw her case was quite hopeless, then she told him he might drive her home.
"I came," he explained, answering an annoyed note in a second question that she asked, "because I understood you were going to church----"
"But I did not say I was."
"I must have dreamed it."
Brice, sitting at the wheel in front of them, smiled--but only within his heart--when this came to his ears; because it was Brice who had been asked during the morning where Mrs. MacBirney was and Brice who had reported. He was senior to Peters, senior to all the Second Lake coachmen and chauffeurs, and usually found out whatever he wanted to find out.
"At any rate," Kimberly laughed good-naturedly, "I have been waiting here half an hour for you."
Brice knew that this was true to the minute, for in that half-hour there had been many glances at two good watches and a hamper of hot-house grapes. Brice himself, since a certain missed train, involving language that lingered yet in his ears, carried a good watch.
But to-day not even amiable profanity, which Brice recalled as normal during extended waits, had accompanied the unusual detention. No messenger had been despatched to sound the young village priest with a view of expediting the ma.s.s and the fine lady had been in nowise interrupted during her lengthened devotions. Kimberly, in this instance, had truthfully been a model of patience.
"These are the grapes," Brice heard behind him, as he let the machine out a bit and fancied the top of the hamper being raised. "Aren"t they exceptional? I found the vines in Algeria. There are lilies on this side."
An expression of involuntary admiration came from the tonneau.
"a.s.sumption lilies! For your sister?"
"No, for you. They are to celebrate the feast."
"The feast? Why, of course!" Then came a categorical question, animated but delivered with keenness: "How did you know that to-day is the feast of the a.s.sumption?"
A bland evasion followed. "I supposed that every one knew the fifteenth of August is the feast of the a.s.sumption. Taste this grape."
"I am very sure _you_ didn"t know."
"But I _did_. Taste the grape."
"Who told you?"
"Whence have you the faculties of the Inquisition? Why do you rack me with questions?"
"I begin to suspect, Mr. Kimberly, that you belong on the rack."
"No doubt. At least I have spent most of my life there."
"Come, please! Who told you?"
"Francis, of course; now will you taste this grape?"
CHAPTER XIV
When MacBirney reached home with the victoria Alice had not yet taken off her hat, and a maid was bringing vases for the lilies. He had been driving toward Sea Ridge and taken the wrong road and was sorry for his delay in getting to the church. Alice accepted his excuses in good part. He tried to explain his misunderstanding about the engagement with Kimberly. She relieved his endeavors by making everything easy, telling him finally how Kimberly had brought her home and had left the grapes and lilies. When the two sat down at luncheon, MacBirney noticed Alice"s preoccupation; she admitted she had a slight headache. She was glad, however, to have him ask her to go for a long motor drive in the afternoon, thinking the air would do her good, and they spent three hours together.
When they got home it was dusk. The dinner served on the porch was satisfying and the day which had opened with so little of promise seemed to do better at the close. Indeed, Alice all day had sought quiet because she had something to say which she was resolved to say this day.
After dinner she remained with her husband in the moonlight. He was talking, over his cigar, of an idea for adding a strip of woodland to the lower end of their new estate, when she interrupted him.
"Should you be greatly shocked, Walter, if I said I wish we could go away from here?" She was leaning toward him on the arm of her chair when she spoke and her hands were clasped.
His astonishment was genuine. "What do you mean?"
"I don"t know. Yet I feel as if we ought to go, Walter."
"What for?"
She was looking earnestly at him, but in the shadow he could not see, though he felt, her eyes.
"It is hard to explain." She paused a moment. "These people are delightful; you know I like them as much as you do."
MacBirney took his cigar from his mouth to express his surprise. "I thought you were crazy about the place and the people and everything else," he exclaimed. "I thought this was just what you were looking for! You"ve said so much about refined luxury and lovely manners----"
"I am thinking of all that." There was enough in her tone of an intention to be heard to cause him to forget his favorite expedient of drowning the subject in a flood of words. "But with all this, or to enjoy it all, one needs peace of mind, and my peace of mind is becoming disturbed."
Quite misunderstanding her, MacBirney thought she referred to the question of church-going, and that subject offered so much delicate ground that Alice continued without molestation.
"It is very hard to say what I meant to say, without saying too little or too much. You know, Walter, you were worried at one time about how Mr. Robert Kimberly would look at your proposals, and you told me you wanted me to be agreeable to him. And without treating him differently from any one else here, I have tried to pay particular regard to what he had to say and everything of that kind. It is awfully hard to specify,"
she hesitated in perplexity. "I am sure I haven"t discriminated him in any way from his brother, or Mr. De Castro, for instance. But I have always shown an interest in things he had to point out, and he seemed to enjoy--perhaps more than the others--pointing things out. And----"
"Well?"
"It seems to me now as if he has begun to take an interest in everything _I_ do----"
Her husband became jocular. "Oh, has he?"
Alice"s words came at last bluntly. "And it completely upsets me, Walter."
MacBirney laughed again. "Why so?"
She took refuge in a shade of annoyance. "Because I don"t like to think about it."
"Think about what?"
"About any man"s--if I must say it--paying attention to me, except my husband."
"Now you are hitting me, aren"t you, Alice? You are pretty clever, after all," declared MacBirney still laughing.
She threw herself back in her chair. "Oh, Walter, you don"t understand at all! Nothing could be further from what I am thinking. I ought not to say he has been attentive enough to speak of. It is not that I dislike Mr. Kimberly. But he does somehow make me uncomfortable. Perhaps I don"t understand their way here."
"Why, that is all there is to it, Alice. It"s merely their way. Give it no thought. He is simply being agreeable. Don"t imagine that every man that sends you flowers is interested in you. Is that all, Allie?"