At a gesture of invitation he seated himself beside her and lifted the Persian pussy to his lap.

"Well," she inquired, "are you really going with us?"

"I can't go when you do, but I'm going to The Breakers for a week or two—solely to keep an eye on your behavior."

"That is jolly!" she said, flushing with pleasure. "Was father pleased when you told him?"

"He didn't say he was pleased."

"He is always reticent," she said, quickly. "But won't it be too jolly for words! We'll travel miles and miles together in bicycle-chairs, and we'll yacht and bathe and ride and golf, and catch amber-jack and sharks, and—you'll persuade father to let me gamble just once at the club—won't you?"

"Not much! Where did you hear that sort of talk, Catharine?"

"Don't tweak Omar's tail and I'll tell you—there! you've done it again, and I won't tell you."

He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired that trick of[Pg 21] suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose. What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles removed from her. Where were his thoughts?

[Pg 21]

Touched in her amour propre, she quietly resumed the map of southern Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his self-centred and provoking meditation.

She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally watched him.

Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him dangerously attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new light, impersonally for the moment. So far away had he apparently drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were observing a stranger—a most interesting and most unusual young man.

He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

Twenty-two, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing like a school-girl!

 Prev. P 20/203 next