"_My_ first impressions of Mr. Hill were very delightful." The English girl laughed softly, her eyes full of reminiscent amus.e.m.e.nt.
"He was a _deus ex machina_ to me--I quite jumped at him, I a.s.sure you!"
"You don"t have to a.s.sure me!" was the elder lady"s unspoken comment. She had been in a state of chronic irritation, ever since that Friday noon when Billy B. Hill"s tall figure had appeared in the hotel dining room. And hurrying Claire away from the conversation he was promptly evoking, she had encountered Arlee Beecher and the Evershams streaming with the other pa.s.sengers from their boat to see the temple of Luxor, a wonderfully gay and excited Arlee, so radiant in the happiness of her own safe world again that she was bright gladness incarnate.... Instantly Robert had reverted to his alarming infatuation ... and Lady Claire had most shamelessly welcomed the American. It was all unspeakably annoying....
Aloud Miss Falconer observed, "I wonder what brought Mr. Hill back to the Nile."
"I wonder," said Lady Claire pleasantly. "But it makes it very nice for us, doesn"t it?" she continued amiably. "He knows quite _everything_ about temples."
"And particularly nice for Miss Beecher--though I can"t say she is treating him very well. However, that may be their way. "Romance apart from results," was, I believe, his phrase."
Lady Claire was silent. But not overlong. "You really think----?"
she suggested tranquilly.
"He came on the same train."
"Coincidence. He mentioned he did not see her in the train till Balliana."
"Umph!" Miss Falconer drew out of her bag the especial knitting which she reserved for the Sabbath, and her fingers flew with expressive spirit. "It"s scandalous," she said at length. "Girls gadding about the face of the earth--picking up chaperons when they remember them."
"It"s their way, you know."
"Oh, yes, it"s their way. And their men seem to like it. Mr. Hill didn"t seem to consider it even _unusual_.... But as I said, he"s hardly a judge," Miss Falconer went on unsparingly. "The man"s bewitched. He never takes his eyes off her."
"I"m sure I don"t blame him." Lady Claire"s tone was most successfully admiring. "She"s too _wonderful_, isn"t she, with those great blue eyes and that astonishing hair! I"m sure Robert is bewitched, too!"
"Nonsense!" But Miss Falconer"s tone was too vigorous, betraying the effort to rout a palpable enemy. "What nonsense!" she repeated.
"He"s civil--naturally--when _you_ haven"t a moment for him. The boy has pride. Too much." The knitting needles clicked warningly.
"Civil!" The girl"s low laughter was mocking. "Dear Miss Falconer, you are such an _euphuist_!"
Miss Falconer looked up, a trifle startled. Her young charge was more than a match for her in irony, but the elder lady did not lack for solid perseverance, and she charged on undeterred.
"Of course the girl"s pretty--too pretty. And Robert"s a man--he has eyes in his head and likes to please them. And she knows who he is and draws him on."
"I don"t think Miss Beecher cares a twopence who Robert is," said Lady Claire honestly. "When I told her he was going to stand for Roxham she answered that she had a very poor opinion of M.P.s--from reading Mrs. Ward. I can"t _quite_ see what she meant--but as for her drawing him on, a moment ago, dear, you were accusing her of luring Mr. Hill back from Cairo."
"I said he followed. I daresay she lured, too. The second string----"
"Then it"s quite _nice_ of me, isn"t it, to carry off her second string to the bazaars and prevent her playing him against Robert!"
Lady Claire laughed mischievously, in a flight of daring so foreign to her usual reticence that Miss Falconer grimly perceived that she was changed indeed. She thought helplessly that it was a great pity that young people couldn"t be treated as the children they were--smacked and made to do what was best for them.
"And after all this dreadful gossiping how can we face our guests at tea?" the girl continued in mock chiding.
"If they are much later we shall not be facing them at all," the older woman declared. "I shall certainly have my tea at the proper time."
The sight of an Arab servant with a tray of dishes had stirred her to this declaration, and promptly she gave her order. In the middle of it, "I"m always late!" said a merry voice, and little Miss Beecher and Falconer were standing on the gra.s.s beside them.
"This time we had no following engagement," said Miss Falconer, unpleasantly reminiscent of another tea time in Cairo, ten days before, but even with her resentment of this American girl"s intrusion into her long-cherished plans, she could not prevent the softening of her regard as she gazed upon her.
"You don"t look as if you had been riding very hard at the Tombs of the Kings," she observed, in reluctant admiration.
"Oh, but we have! We did quite a lot of Tombs--not anything like thoroughly, of course!--and then we rode back early and made ourselves tidy for your tea party," Arlee blithely explained, and Miss Falconer perceived that her brother Robert had returned to the hotel without seeking them out, had arrayed himself in fresh white flannels and returned to the boat to escort Miss Beecher across the road into the hotel garden.
Absently she sighed. Her eyes fell away from the peach-blossom prettiness of Arlee"s lovely face to the subtle simplicity of her white frock of loosely woven silk, and she wondered if that heavy embroidery meant money--or merely spending money. And then she looked across at Lady Claire, and sighed again for her dream of an aristocratic alliance.
"Mrs. Eversham--?" she thought to inquire.
"They"re having the vicar--or is it the rector?--to tea. They asked him this morning before your message came," Arlee explained. She did not explain that the vicar, or the rector, had imagined, in accepting, that she, too, was to be of that tea party on the boat and was even now inquiring zealously of her of the Evershams.
"Here"s Mr. Hill," said Lady Claire.
Miss Falconer stirred; there was room for the fifth chair between her and Arlee. Lady Claire also stirred; there was room between her and Robert Falconer. And there Billy B. Hill seated himself after a general exchange of greetings.
"How were the bazaars?" said Arlee gaily across the table.
"You mean the department store of Mr. Isaac Cohen," Billy laughed back. "They are all under him, you know."
"Not _really_!" Falconer exclaimed, in disillusionment. "It rather takes it out, doesn"t it, to know it is so commercialized."
"What did you expect--it is the twentieth century," Miss Falconer retorted, putting aside her knitting as the tea things arrived.
"Sometimes it is," said Arlee.
"I think it"s more so than ever, here," declared Lady Claire.
"Egypt"s so _frightfully_ civilized----"
"Not when you"re camping in the desert."
Again that funny little smile flitted over Arlee"s face; not once did she glance at Billy, but for all her air of unconsciousness he felt that she was subtly sharing her thoughts with him and a quick spark of gladness flashed in him.
Those had been three horrible days for Billy B. Hill.
Friday morning he had been practically a prisoner until his trunks had arrived. He had emerged upon a spectacle of England triumphant--Robert Falconer escorting Arlee to the temple of Luxor.
Later that afternoon he had called upon Arlee upon the boat to find Falconer still there, and the Evershams very much so.
Robert Falconer had accompanied him back to the hotel. There was something that he wanted to ask, and he asked it bluntly, but with embarra.s.sment. Had Billy said anything at all to Arlee of that nonsense at the palace?
Here was a contingency for which Billy was not provided. He made no provisions for this with Arlee.
"Have you?" he parried.
"Not a word," said the young Englishman. "We"ve not mentioned the fellow"s filthy name. But I wondered----"
"I did tell her we got worried one night, and tried to get into his palace like a pair of brigands," Billy answered slowly.
"She must have thought us great fools," the sandy-haired young man replied disgustedly. Clearly he felt that Billy had flourished this story before Arlee to appear romantic, and he winced at its absurdity.