第73章

The personnel of the Hosacks' house party had changed.

Mrs.Noel d'Oyly had led her little husband away to Newport to stay with Mrs.Henry Vanderdyke, where were Beatrix and Pelham Franklin, with a bouncing baby boy, the apple of Mr.Vanderdyke's eye.Enid Ouchterlony had left for Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her aunt, Mrs.Horace Pallant, entertained in an almost royal fashion and was eager to set her match-making arts to work on behalf of her only unmarried niece.Enid had gone to the very edge of well-bred lengths to land Courtney Millet, but Scots ancestry and an incurable habit of talking sensibly and rather well had handicapped her efforts.She had confided to Primrose with a sudden burst of uncharacteristic incaution that she seemed doomed to become an old man's darling.Her last words to the sympathetic Primrose were, "Oh, Prim, Prim, pray that you may never become intellectual.It will kill all your chances." Miss Hosack was, however, perfectly safe.

Milwood, fired by a speech at the Harvard Club by Major General Leonard Wood, had scratched all his pleasant engagements for the summer, and was at Plattsburg learning for the first time, at the camp which will some day occupy an inspiring chapter in the history of the United States, the full meaning of the words "duty" and "discipline." Their places had been taken by Major and Mrs.Barnet Thatcher and dog, Regina Waterhouse and Vincent Barclay, a young English officer invalided out of the Royal Flying Corps after bringing down eight German machines.A cork leg provided him with constant amusement.He had a good deal of property in Canada and was making his way to Toronto by easy stages.A cheery fellow, cut off from all his cherished sports but free from even the suggestion of grousing.Of his own individual stunts, as he called them, he gave no details and made no mention of the fact that he carried the D.S.O.and the Croix de Guerre in his bag.He had met the Hosacks at the American Embassy in London in 1913.He was rather sweet on Primrose.

The fact that Joan was still there was easily accounted for.She liked the place, and her other invitations were not interesting.

Hosack didn't want her to go either, but of course that had nothing to do with it, and so far as Mrs.Hosack was concerned, let the bedroom be occupied by some one of her set and she was happy enough.

Indeed, it saved her the brain fag of inviting some one else, "always difficult with so many large houses to fill and so few people to go round, my dear."Harry Oldershaw was such a nice boy that he did just as he liked.If it suited him he could keep his room until the end of the season.

The case of Gilbert Palgrave was entirely different.A privileged, spoiled person, who made no effort to be generally agreeable and play up, he was rather by way of falling into the same somewhat difficult category as a minor member of the British Royalty.His presence was an honor although his absence would have been a relief.

He chose to prolong his visit indefinitely and there was an end of it.

Every day at Easthampton had, however, been a nightmare to Palgrave.

Refusing to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat plays with a mouse.Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next.The very instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway his hopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks and her disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw.She had taken a mischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charming and appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazing protestations of love and leave him inarticulate with anger and wounded vanity."If you want me to love you, make me," she had said."I shall fight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best." He had done his best.

With a totally uncharacteristic humbleness, forgetting the whole record of his former easy conquests, and with this young slim thing so painfully in his blood that there were times when he had the greatest difficulty to retain his self-control, he had concentrated upon the challenge that she had flung at him and set himself to teach her how to love with all the thirsty eagerness of a man searching for water.People who had watched him in his too wealthy adolescence and afterwards buying his way through life and achieving triumphs on the strength of his, handsome face and unique position would have stared in incredulous amazement at the sight of this love-sick man in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twist him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he were a green and callow youth.Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant impertinence, had picked and chosen.Was it possible?